


Passive-Aggressive Partnership

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds, Spencer Reid - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 45,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9859898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry. ;)





	1. Chapter 1

“Again?” Reid asked, pouting that he had to be the one to go to the local medical examiner’s office for their case. They’d been working together on and off for years. As the top medical examiner in the DC area, Y/N was their go-to for any local cases. She was also cocky, obnoxious, loud and just all-around unlikeable - at least in Reid’s eyes. “She’s so obnoxious.”

Morgan laughed and shook his head. He’d always thought that the medical examiner and their very own doctor would get along well. She was a lot like him. She wasn’t cocky, she was smart, annoyingly so, just like Reid. Morgan didn’t find her obnoxious; he just found that she liked to correct people if she thought they were wrong…just like Reid. She was a little loud, but she’d grown up in New York, so that was her excuse for being loud; Morgan bought it. “You have to learn to interact with anyone we need for a case, Pretty Boy,” he said. “Can’t pick and choose.” Reid grimaced, which only caused Morgan to laugh harder.

“Plus, she’s awesome!” Garcia exclaimed. “I have her phone number. We text all the time. We’ve gone out for drinks and dancing a couple times. She’s great. I think someone has a crush and that’s why he thinks she’s so obnoxious.”

“I’m not in high school, Garcia. I didn’t even do that when I was in high school.”

Emily sat back in her chair, thankful to have the distraction of a benign conversation so she didn’t have to look at the grotesque nature of the crime scene pictures. “Well, in all fairness, you were a preteen in high school, so of course you didn’t.”

“Well,” Hotch said sternly, glancing in Reid’s direction, “We all have our orders. Let’s go. We need to get ahead of this unsub.”

As everyone pushed back from the table, Hotch and Emily off to crime scene number one, Rossi off to interview the first victm’s parents, and JJ and Morgan off to crime scene number two, Reid sat there, composing himself before heading off to deal with the obnoxious M.E. If he were to not see her for another 1,000 years, it would still be too soon.

Here goes nothing.

—–

As Reid took a deep breath outside the M.E.’s office in an attempt to keep his composure, he found himself smoothing out the wrinkles in the shirt and the hair out of his eyes for the fifth time in as many minutes. If he didn’t know any better, one might think he had something to prove. 

Walking inside, he passed the sweet old lady that worked as the medical examiner’s secretary of sorts, giving a small wave before wiping the hair out of his face yet again. Dammit. Why wouldn’t it stay in place? More importantly, why did he care? He knocked on the door, waiting to hear her voice reverberate off the walls. 

“Come in!” she screamed, looking up to see that it was he who had come to see her. “Dr. Reid. Nice to see you again.” That didn’t sound genuine. “You’re here for information about the young woman found at 459 Coolridge Road?”

“That I am,” he replied, staring her down in an attempt to show that he was just as capable as she was. Over their years working together, they always seemed to try and outdo each other. Whoever said that adults stopped with passive-aggressive arguments once they got out of their teen years - that they were better able to communicate - had never seen a standoff between Dr. Reid and Y/N. “What can you tell me?”

“Although I’m not the profiler,” she started, causing Reid to go off on a tangent in his own head. Right. You’re not the profiler. I am. “I’d say whoever your killer is, he has a lot of unchecked rage coursing through him. In addition to being tied up by the ankles and wrists, she was sexually assaulted with some kind of cylindrical object before being killed.”

“What was the cause of death?” he asked.

When she turned the woman’s head to the side, he could see a circular indentation. “Blunt force trauma to the nose actually. The indentation is likely not from the same instrument she was assaulted with; I’d say it was something with a circular base, like a trophy or something. The force with which she was hit pushed the ethmoid bone into her brain, which killed her almost instantly.” Throughout their years working together, Reid had always seen Y/N as methodical and emotionless, which he couldn’t understand, but when he looked up, he could see her grimace in disgust and pity; it was the first time he had seen her as a real person, instead of a robotic doctor. 

“Last question. If you had to hazard a guess as to what weapon she was assaulted with, you would say?” he wondered. 

Y/N swallowed hard, covering the victim’s face with the sheet before answering. “My best guess would be a hair curler, or something with the same relative diameter.”

“Oh god. Okay. You haven’t gotten the second victim in yet, have you?” he asked. When the door knocked, she explained that it was probably the second victim arriving. “Alright,” he said, thinking that for the first time, he didn’t actually hate being in her presence. “If you wouldn’t mind giving me a call after you’d finished examining the second victim, I’d appreciate it.”

With a quick nod and a thank you, Reid turned around and walked out of the office, ready to interview the second victim’s mother at Hotch’s request. Y/N had said nothing as he left the room, which made him realize how much he really disliked her, despite the new side of her he’d just seen. He’d have to go back later, but hopefully, they could nail down a profile first.

—–

After leaving Y/N’s office, Reid did as he was asked and interviewed the mother of the second victim before reconvening with the rest of the team back at the station. “We don’t have any information on the second victim yet,” Hotch said, as they started to go over all the information they had acquired through the day, “But we do have two women in their early 20s, who still lived with their parents, assaulted and killed in their own homes while their parents were away.” Immediately, he dialed the number to cal Garcia.

“Girl genius, at your service,” she said with her usual trademarked perkiness.

“Babygirl, can you look into the victim’s social media backgrounds for us. They were both attacked in their own homes when their parents were away and given their age, it’s likely that they put that information up online,” Morgan said. 

“Doing a search now. I’ll hit you back when I have something.”

With a click, she disconnected the line, which was when Reid chimed in. “Y/N said that our first victim was tied up, sexually assaulted with something that in her estimate is a hair curler, and then died from blunt force trauma to the nose, causing the ethmoid bone to pierce her brain, killing her immediately. She was right. This unsub has a lot of backed up rage in him. He’s not going to stop until we catch him.”

“Agreed,” JJ said before deviating of the course of the case. “Did you say Y/N was right? And did you just say her name, instead of ‘that medical examiner.’”

“She was,” he shrugged, a heat rising to his face. “I can admit when someone else is right.”

Emily pushed back her chair from the table, walking over the board where pictures of both of the victims were hanging up. “We’re looking for a white man, 30s to 40s. Probably still lives with his own mother, and given the use of a hair curler, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was assaulted as a child with something similar.”

Everyone seemed to agree on the general profile, which would be further honed when Reid went back to the M.E.’s office to get information regarding the second victim. 

As Reid left the station, the rest of the team was sent home at Rossi and Hotch’s insistence. None of them were good to the victims if they weren’t on their game - and it was getting late. All Reid wanted to do was go home, but first, he had to deal with Y/N one more time. At night. When she and he were both tired. Fuck. 

—–

“Hello again,” Reid said upon entering Y/N’s office. Apparently, she was just finishing up the reports because the second victim had already been closed into one of the drawers.

“Let’s get this over with,” she yawned. “I am desperate to get home.”

“You’re not the only one,” Reid quipped, taking a deep breath in to try and control himself. “We all want to go home, but we all have a job to do.” Her head popped up angrily. Maybe it was the fact that she was tired. Maybe it was because they had both been passive aggressive with each other for years. He didn’t know, but before he knew it she was asking him what the hell his problem was.

“I don’t have a problem,” he insisted, his hands in his pockets forming fists in an attempt to control himself.

She stood up from her chair and got right up in his face. “Ever since the first time we saw each other, you have had an attitude with me. We’re two people just trying to do our jobs and I don’t need a fucking attitude from you every time you walk in the door. What have I done to deserve your anger?”

“You try and do the jobs of everyone else around you instead of sticking to what you know. I don’t need you profiling. I need you to give the medical information I need. On top of that, you are a goddamn robot when it comes to these victims. Today was the first time in all the years we’ve worked together that I’ve seen you show any kind of emotion and that really puts me off. I’m sorry if I can’t control my facial expressions, but it bothers me,” Reid said.

A fire rose in her eyes that she hadn’t felt in a long time, and he’d never seen in her before. “In order to do my job effectively, I need to close off from emotion, because if I let emotion get to me every time, I would’ve killed myself long ago. I may seem robotic to you, but that’s the way I survive!” In her anger, she’d gotten within inches of his face, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. 

Without thinking, Reid pressed his lips to hers before pulling away. A moment of tension hung in the air, before she initiated the next kiss, her tears falling between their lips. The heat between them grew as he turned her around and backed her into the wall, their tongues slowly finding their way into the other’s mouths. She gasped against his skin, wrapping her arms around his neck as he grabbed her hands and gathered them both above her head.

Her labored breathing resounded through his head as his lips made their way to her neck, which had started to bead with sweat under his heated touch. Never before did he think that this is where they would’ve ended up. Why had there been so much anger between them if this is how they connected? Were they only doing this out of anger? Or was there something else there that they’d never acknowledged before?

Before he knew it, her hand had wandered into the space between the top of his shirt and his collarbone, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. Both knew that they were going to fast, and as if on cue, she pulled away from him, staring into his eyes before ducking out of his grasp and heading back toward her desk. “So… umm…your victim,” she stuttered breathlessly.

Reid would just have to figure out what that all meant later. She needed to pretend it didn’t happen for now and he needed to organize his thoughts…compose himself, which was considerably harder than he thought given that his cock was begging to be released from his pants. “W-What can you tell me about the second victim?” he asked. He desperately wanted her to speed talk so that he could leave.

Thankfully, she obliged his silent request. “Her cause of death and the assault are identical to the first victim. Both were assaulted with the same type of cylindrical object and both died from blunt force trauma to the nose, although your second victim was hit with something squared off. My best guess is that the killer comes prepared with the assault weapon, but uses whatever happens to be around when it comes to actually killing them. So, you can call me if you need any additional information, right?” she finally finished, tugging her lab coat closer to her body as she sat back down. 

“Absolutely. Thank you very m-much for the information. I’ll be in contact with you soon,” he said as he left the room without another word. Speaking of robot. That’s what he’d just sounded like. What was that?

What the fuck just happened?


	2. Chapter 2

No, but really.

What. Just. Happened?

As he walked back to his car in a stupefied trance, ready to return home for the night, he looked down at his pants to take in the situation; he was rock hard. Wasn’t in his mind - that actually did happen. He’d just made out with the medical examiner he claimed to hate and had a very visceral reaction. But why? Where did it come from? Was he supposed to do something about it now? Later? Never?

When he got to the car, he looked around, thankful to be the only person on the street at such a late point in the night. If someone else was around, it would’ve been very obvious that something had just gone down. The entire drive back to his apartment was fraught with frustration. One would think that 10 minutes after the fact, with no additional stimulation, his arousal would subside some, but there it was, still hard as a fucking rock as he sat in his parked car thinking about the taste of her skin. God, he wanted to taste her again.

Quickly, he ran inside, going over the facts of the case in his head in an attempt to think about anything else. By the time he reached his apartment, he’d cemented the facts in his head, gotten changed for bed and slipped under the covers. Before he’d gotten to Y/N’s office for the second time that day, he’d been exhausted; he should’ve gotten into bed and passed out. But his brain wouldn’t allow it. For nearly an hour, he tossed and turned, thinking of anything to get her out of his head, but the instant something else entered his brain, his thoughts would revert back to her, until he couldn’t take it anymore and went to take care of business before returning to bed and finally passing out for the night.

——

Hotch had told everyone to meet in the conference room by seven o’clock the next morning with a fresh start. Problem was, Spencer’s mind was still clouded from the night before - and it was obvious. 

“Bad night’s sleep, Pretty Boy?” Morgan asked, watching as Spencer plopped down into his chair and guzzled nearly half of his exceptionally-large coffee in one go. “Really bad night.”

Awful didn’t even begin to cover it. Every time he closed his eyes, he thought of his and Y/N’s barely five-minute long encounter, which caused him to toss and turn in frustration. “I barely slept,” he yawned. “Hence the coffee.” Just as Hotch walked into the room, Spencer finished the last of his coffee, 100 percent positive he’d be needing a second cup yesterday.

“Reid, how’d it go with Y/N last night?” Hotch asked. 

“W-What do you mean, how did it go?” he stuttered. 

“What was she able to tell us about the second victim?” Hotch said. Oh man, this was really getting to him. What else would Hotch mean? Nothing was happening. 

Or was it?

“She said that the cause of death is the same, but a different object was used. The assault weapon was the same though,” Spencer yawned again. 

As Spencer’s mind wandered from the memory of Y/N’s collarbone and down the buttons of her shirt, Emily and Morgan went over the rest of the information they had from each crime scene. JJ leaned back in her chair, looking between the TV and Spencer. “So that would mean that the attacker comes to the scene with the assault weapon, but the weapon used for the blunt force trauma is something that’s picked up at the scene?”

“That’s what Y/N said,” Spencer yawned for a third time in as many minutes.

Apparently, everyone else had taken notice of Spencer’s inability to stay awake. “You okay, kid?” Rossi asked. “The purpose of not working the case overnight was that you could get some sleep.”

“Definitely didn’t work out that way,” Garcia laughed as Hotch picked up his phone. Apparently, they had a third victim.

“Okay. This unsub does not seem to have a cooling off period. We have another victim found in a house less than 10 blocks from the last victim. JJ, you and Emily interview the victim’s parents. Garcia, look into any connections between the three victims - do they go to the same college, work in the same area, go to the same coffee shop, anything. Morgan, you can head to the local station and catch up their lead on the case with what we have so far. Rossi and I will go to the crime scene, and Reid, you can go back to the medical examiner’s office for the COD on our third victim.”

Dammit. He had to go see her again. Was it dammit because he really couldn’t stand her? Or was it dammit because he wanted her? What was he supposed to do?

——

Once Spencer arrived at the M.E.’s office, he sat in the car trying to figure out how he was supposed to go in there. Was he supposed to just go in there and act as if nothing happened? Maybe he was supposed to immediately address what happened and hope for the best. Or maybe he was supposed to forget it ever happened.

“Dammit. Dammit. Dammit,” he whispered to himself as he got out of the car. 

Just like yesterday, he walked past the older woman in front with a small wave, knocking on Y/N’s door with more force than he had intended. “Come in,” she called out, obviously not knowing who was on the other side of the door.

“D-Dr. Reid,” she stammered. “You’re here for information about the third victim, I assume?”

Instead of trusting his words, he just shook his head, the heat of embarrassment rising in his cheeks as he looked at her. Underneath the white lab coat, which looked like it was fitted to her frame anyway, she wore a pair of black dress pants and a royal blue top that drew attention to the hollow of her breasts. “This is without a doubt the same person,” she started, lifting the sheet from the victim. “The abuse she suffered before death was inflicted with the same instrument and again, the instrument used to kill her was something else with a squared off base.”

“Definitely the same unsub. And he shows no signs of slowing down. We’ve got to get ahead of this guy,” he said, turning towards the door to leave.

When he turned to leave, Y/N stammered something akin to “shouldn’t we discuss what happened…”, but he didn’t have the energy, patience or time to deal with that right now. This guy was never going to stop if they didn’t find him. He’d have to deal with Y/N later.


	3. Chapter 3

Spencer walked out to the car, ready to return to the team with the new-yet-old information; the latest victim had suffered the same abuse as the other two. After a short drive back to the Bureau, he parlayed the information he’d learned to the rest of the team. “The first victim was probably killed with the butt of the broken vase we found at the crime scene. As for the other two victims, I think we’ll probably find a trophy of some kind in a dumpster near the crime scenes. The measurements Y/N took of their blunt force injuries show that a trophy with a squared-off base is the most likely candidate for our murder weapon.” For a split second, Garcia beeped into the room, claiming she had found a connection between the three victims. 

“The kind of rage that this unsub had starting with the first victim doesn’t just come out of nowhere,” Hotch started, looking down the hallway as Garcia teetered in on her impossibly-high heels. “When we find him, we’ll undoubtedly uncover other complaints that no one took seriously.”

“As always you are correct, my liege,” Garcia said. “I found a link between the three victims. All three had been frequenting a local career center after being laid off. I used the basics of the profile to narrow down employees, and as I suspected, they were all helped by George Van Der Vennan. If the crime scenes weren’t so unbelievably brutal, I might actually feel bad for him, but I can’t because he’s a horrible human being. I just don’t understand why people do the things they do. I mean…”

“Penelope,” Hotch said sternly.

“Right, sir. Sorry. Anyway, Van Der Vennan is 41 years old and currently lives with his 67-year-old aunt Betty. He was raised by a single mother, Betty’s younger sister Margaret, who had George at the age of 18; she’s since overdosed on heroin. In order to make ends meet, she worked part-time as a cashier and part-time as a hairdresser, which was my first indication because Y/N said that the weapon used for the sexual assault was likely a curling iron, right?” she asked, turning toward Spencer. With his confirmation, she continued. “CPS was called on more than one occasion because the neighbors claimed they could hear screaming, but every time they arrived, George would say that there was nothing wrong and the authorities would leave. The nail in the proverbial coffin? I looked up a picture of his mother and she has a very distinctive nose. If the blunt force is to their noses, it makes sense that his own mother has a peculiar-looking nose…right?”

Morgan put his arm around Garcia’s shoulder, pulling her into his embrace so he could kiss her on the head. “That’s our guy. You have an address?”

“Do I? Do I have an address?” she asked, her blonde hair bouncing as she feigned hurt. “Of course I do.” After handing Morgan the address, the team was out the door in flash. Hopefully, Van Der Vennan hadn’t already picked out his next victim. 

—–

“George Van Der Vennan,” Morgan screamed as he knocked on the door, his gun cocked and ready to shoot. “Open up!” Instead of a gentleman around his age, an elderly woman, presumably his aunt, opened up, claiming that her nephew was down in the basement. 

“What did he do?” she asked meekly as the rest of the team shuffled in behind Morgan and started down the stairs to the unsub. She really had no clue. It was amazing how family could be so oblivious to the troubles of their loved ones. Undoubtedly, she was aware of the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of her sister, but judging by the look in her eyes, she had no inkling that he was up to anything sinister. 

As the last one down the stairs, Spencer watched, gun at the ready as Morgan called for him to stand up. Van Der Vennan glanced quickly at the basement window, probably wondering if he should try and make a break for it, but with six federal agents training their weapons on him, he had no chance, and he knew it. When he turned around, Morgan crossed the room, handcuffing his arms tightly behind his back.

After so many years with the Bureau, Spencer unfortunately knew what made these unsays tick, but on occasion, their savagery still took him by surprise. Morgan made his way up the stairs with Van Der Vennan, but he stopped himself dead in the center of the staircase, turning to read with the deadest of eyes. “She had to pay.”

“They weren’t your mother,” he said, knowing what the deranged man meant; he hated that he knew without clarification. “They were innocent young women that came to you for help.”

“Well they made a mistake then, didn’t they?” he said calmly, with the slightest smirk of knowing that betrayed his attempt at an insanity plea.

Spencer shoved him in the back up the rest of the stairs, swallowing hard as he went down to where the man lived. Morgan, Rossi and JJ went up with the unsub to handle things on that end, while Spencer, Emily and Hotch stayed downstairs to look for the assault weapon. 

The hiding space he’d kept it in was almost cliched. Conspicuously hidden in a box under the bed was an older model curling iron. From the looks of it, it hadn’t been used for its intended purpose for years. Hotch held out an evidence bag as Spencer dumped the iron wand into it, handing it off to JJ so that she could close it. “Mrs. Van Der Vennan?” JJ asked once they returned upstairs. “Do you recognize this?”

At the sight of the wand, the woman started to cry. “That was my sister’s favorite curling iron she used at work,” she croaked. “It was the one she used to hit him with. I couldn’t do anything to help him. I’m so sorry.”

“This is not your fault,” JJ said, placing her hand on her shoulder.

After handing over the evidence and the unsub to the local authorities, the team headed back to the Bureau to finish up their paperwork for the night. It turned out the only one who actually stayed was Hotch. Everyone else was too tired, sleepily walking out of the bullpen thankful that they’d stopped Van Der Vennan before he had a chance to hurt anyone else.

—–

The case was over.

The adult in Spencer wanted to go and talk to Y/N - ask her what happened and what it meant - if anything.

The child in him however wanted to avoid all awkwardness, go home, go to bed, and forget this ever happened. 

But the adult won out. Before driving toward her office, he texted her to see if she was still there. Thank god she was, because he just wanted to get this awkwardness over it and either do something about it or forget it entirely. “Hello Y/N,” he said, opening the door to the dimly lit room. Apparently, she was also finishing up paperwork for the case.

When she looked up, something had changed. The eyes that had looked so hard in the past looked softer now, but he honestly wasn’t sure if that was because his brain was looking for something or because there actually was a change in her. “You caught him, right?”

“Yea, thankfully,” he stuttered. “When we looked in his basement we found the name of his new clients, so he was definitely not going to stop.”

“The nature of the business, I guess,” she said, taking a deep breath and stilling the pen on the paper. He could see she was tired, whether it was just tonight or the job in general he wasn’t quite sure. He was about to bring things up, when she saved him the trouble. “What exactly happened the other day?”

Spencer opened his mouth to speak, but at first nothing came out. “I don’t know. I was pretty sure we hated each other. But that night, it sure didn’t feel like it.”

“Me too,” she chuckled, putting her paperwork in a lockable drawer for the night. “I can’t take anymore tonight. I need to go home. Another question. Do you regret what happened?”

“No,” he said honestly and without thought. When he stopped to think about, he realized he didn’t. Maybe they clashed so much because they were more alike than they wanted to admit. “No, I don’t. Do you?”

Reaching behind him toward the coat hook, she grabbed her peacoat and hung up the clinical lab coat. “No. In addition to your big brain and hot bod, you’re a good kisser. But I am wary about taking this any further. Given that we work together, I mean.”

“You know a recent study has shown that nearly 15 percent of people meet their long-term significant others at work,” he said without thinking. Of course he would know that. “And you think I’m hot?”

She laughed as they walked outside into the cool night air. As she tugged her coat tighter around her body, she said it again. “Of course I think you’re hot. Who doesn’t?”

“Everyone.”

“You don’t see the way people look at you, Dr. Reid,” she replied. “Let’s try this. Kiss me again. If we both feel the way we did the other day, we’ll try a date. If not, we won’t.”

They stepped next to her car and he opened the door, bringing his hand to the right side of her face and leaning in to press a soft kiss to her lips. Much more tender than the other night. A sigh escaped her as their lips met and in response her hand snaked its way around his waist. “Tomorrow night?” she whispered after breaking the kiss. 

“I’ll probably be in the office late tomorrow night,” he said regretfully. “But the night after?”

“Difficult as always, Dr. Reid.”

“S- Spencer,” he stammered. “Please, call me Spencer.”

“Difficult as always, Spencer,” she said with a smile. “I’ll see you then.”


	4. Chapter 4

It was a wonder that anyone around Spencer could get any work done considering that for the past few hours he’d been hitting his pen against the desk repeatedly. “Okay, Reid,” Emily said, turning toward the genius’ desk after trying to tune out his noises for what felt like ages. “What’s up with you? All we are doing today is paperwork and you seem exceptionally anxious. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said, continuing to hit his pen against the desk seemingly faster than the fastest drummer in the world. “Just really want to get out of here today.” Yesterday had been filled the paperwork and today was more of the same, but while yesterday had been nearly 15 straight hours of paperwork and then home to sleep, today was a normal eight-hour day of paperwork and then a date - his first date in what felt like forever with the last person he had ever imagined.

Emily’s mouth dropped open, forming a small smile as she looked toward Reid. “Oh!”

“Oh what?” Spencer asked, turning his attention away from the elevator. God he wanted to get out of here. He wanted to see if whatever this thing was between him and Y/N was a one- or two-time fluke, or possibly something more.

“’Oh,’ I see why you want to get out of here so quickly,” she laughed. Once Emily said that everyone else gathered around Spencer’s desk. “You have a date.”

“Who with?” Garcia asked excitedly, clapping her hands as she sat down beside him. “Tell us all about her.”

“I don’t have a date,” he smiled, looking down at his paperwork. He knew that they knew, but he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of admitting it. “I just want to get out of here. I’m tired. I want to go home.”

Garcia just smacked the desk over and over again. “No, you don’t. You have a date. When can we meet her?”

Finally, it was time to leave. So while everyone gathered tighter around him, trying to figure out where he was going and who he was going with, Spencer shrugged on his coat and smiled, walking away without a word. “I’m going home to sleep,” he said, purposely unconvincingly. “See you all tomorrow.”

“We have to figure out who he’s seeing!” Garcia exclaimed, turning around to everyone else. She started running toward her office when Morgan called after her.

“Babygirl, leave it alone!” he laughed.

——-

“Hi, Spencer,” Y/N said, as she walked down the stairs and out of her apartment building. “How’re you doing?”

“Better now that I’m out of work,” he laughed, reaching between them to grab her hand. When his skin touched hers, he felt something - he couldn’t put words to it. She must’ve felt the same thing, because she slipped her hand into his with a smile. “I know the normal first date thing is dinner and a movie, but I actually had something else in mind.”

As they walked down the street, Y/N hoped he was taking her where she thought he was taking her. There was a used bookstore up the block from her apartment building. They’d never discussed anything but work up until their impromptu make-out session, but he’d assumed she liked reading. And he was so right. “You’re taking me to the bookstore?” she asked excitedly. “I love this place, but work is so crazy that I don’t get to go that often.”

“When I was thinking about why we’ve been so at odds, I wondered if it was because we are more alike than we want to admit,” he said.

Y/N laughed, opening the door to the bookstore and getting on line to place an order. “What obnoxious pains in the ass?”

“I am not a pain in the ass, you are,” he laughed. “Those were your words not mine.” They placed an order - a bottle of water and chocolate croissant for her and a cappuccino and chocolate-sprinkled donut for him - and sat down in an armchair in the corner of the store, with her in his lap.

Y/N insisted that they were both, in fact, annoying geniuses. “I will admit that I am a pain the ass and that I’m annoying and loud, but for you, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem,” she laughed.

“I am not a pain in the ass,” he chuckled under his breath. “And are you technically a genius? Because I have a certifiably genius IQ of 187.”

She rolled her eyes, her head falling back as she combed her fingers through her hair. “Oh, I know, Spencer. That whole ‘pain in the ass’ thing I was talking about? You’ve told me many times before how high your IQ is, presumably in an attempt to assert your authority.”

“I don’t ‘assert my authority,’” he said, using air quotes in the dorkiest way she’d ever seen. “I do have an IQ of 187. I’m just stating facts.”

“But stating facts can make you look like an ass!” she exclaimed, before being shushed by some of the nearby patrons. “Sorry. See, you got me in trouble.”

“You got you in trouble,” he laughed. “Because you’re loud.” Over the next hour, the two bickered about who was louder (her, by her own exclamation), who was more stubborn (him, although he was too stubborn to admit it), and who was smarter (he insisted that since his IQ was two point higher than hers, he was smarter, but she insisted her street-smarts outweighed his by a mile, so that gave her the edge.)

After making in through bout after bout of laughter, Spencer pulled a book off the shelf. “I have no idea what this book is or what it’s about, so I was thinking that we could take turns reading to each other and find out together.”

“For an annoying pain in the ass, you definitely know how to take a girl on a date,” she said.

——-

As Spencer made his way into work the next morning, a Friday thankfully, his mind wandered off to what he would have described as the perfect date. They bickered like friendly enemies (frenemies as Garcia had clued him in), but they were very much alike. She came from a broken home - her father left her at a young age, so her mother was her everything, just like him. She was also an only child, started college at a young age, although not as young as he was, and wanted to further her studies eventually. They took turns bickering and reading to each other before walking back toward her apartment, where he kissed her good night and asked to take her out again soon.

“So…” JJ said as Spencer walked off the elevator. “You get a good night’s sleep last night?”

“I am so well-rested,” he replied without missing a beat.

JJ linked her arm in his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Gonna tell us who she is?”

“Nope.”

At least that confirmed for everyone that he hadn’t gone home to sleep - not that any of them truly believed that. 

Because of their hectic and random schedules, he and Y/N said that they’d play their next date by ear, but both were looking forward to it. When Hotch signaled that everyone needed to make their way into the conference room, Spencer realized that another date would have to wait; they had a case, 3,000 miles away in California this time. 

Immediately, the team convened in the conference room, talking idly about their night’s last night (in an attempt to get Spencer to spill the details), while Hotch went to go grab the files for the case. Reid had been running late, so he hadn’t had his morning cup of coffee. “I’m gonna go grab a cup while we wait for Hotch,” he said, leaving the room. 

Less than a minute later, Hotch returned with the necessary files and they, in turn, waited for Spencer to return with his usual cup of sugar with some coffee mixed in. All of a sudden, there was a loud buzzing noise on the table. Spencer had left his phone. Morgan was seated next to him and although he attempted to keep his eyes away from the text message on the screen, the name jumped out at him, and his mouth dropped open.

“What is it?” Garcia asked. “Something wrong?”

“Not at all,” Morgan smiled. “I just think I know who Pretty Boy went out with last night.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, my statuesque God of Chocolate Thunder,” Garcia said, “Who did Boy Wonder go out with?”

“Y/N,” Morgan replied with a smile. “So much for her being obnoxious and annoying.”

When Morgan looked around the room, everyone was in varying states of surprise and anything but surprised. Garcia was stunned. Emily wore a knowing smile. Hotch and Rossi, of course, weren’t fazed at all. “It’s about damn time he asked her out,” Rossi exclaimed, raising his eyebrows as Spencer walked back into the room to stunned silence.

“Why is everyone so quiet?” Spencer asked, sitting down at the table with the god-given elixir that was his cup of coffee. “Were you waiting for me to start?” 

“No,” Hotch said, surprising everyone else by being the first one to talk. “It’s just that when you left the room, you left your phone on the table.” It was so rare for Hotch to be smiling at work, no less in the conference room, where such grotesque, demented crimes were discussed, but there he was, teasing Spencer. “You got a text.”

Immediately, the confused look on Spencer’s face turned to a busted one. He still tried to play it off though. “I’ll answer it later. No big deal.”

“No big deal!” Garcia asked, eliciting laughter from the rest of their friends. “No big deal? You’re going out with Y/N!”

Spencer slapped his hands over his face, burying his head to try and contain his embarrassment. Not that she was embarrassing, he just didn’t know how to handle talking about his romantic life (or more often, his lack of one) in front of his friends. “We went on one date,” he said quietly, trying as hard as he could to downplay the situation. 

Of course, that didn’t work.

“You’ve only gone on one date so far,” Morgan replied with a sly smile. “She said, ‘I had a great time last night. Looking forward to the next one.’”

“I thought you said she was obnoxious,” Emily laughed. She couldn’t count the amount of times Spencer had complained about having to work with her. It was hysterical every time because he was the only one that didn’t seem to get that the reason they butted heads so much was because they were all too similar. 

“She is obnoxious!” Spencer exclaimed, remembering the way she called him stubborn. He wasn’t stubborn, she was. “She said I was stubborn.”

“You are stubborn!” everyone said simultaneously, laughing at Spencer’s expression of indignation. “You’re being stubborn about being stubborn.” Morgan couldn’t contain his laughter - this is what he had been saying for years.

Spencer scrunched his mouth shut. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with his friends today. He just had to resign himself to being ragged on for the remainder of the day. “I am not stubborn. Can we just get to the case please?” he asked, desperate to turn the attention away from himself.

“Sure thing, lover boy,” JJ laughed.

—–

Their case out in California was different to say the least. While their normal victims tended to be children, teenagers or adults, their three victims so far were a minimum of 60 years old.

“So all three of these victims had in-home care after a surgery and died suddenly of the flu, all within a 15 block radius?” Reid asked Garcia over the connection on the jet.

Despite the distance between the BAU and the airborne jet, the furious sound of typing could be heard throughout the jet. “All three of the victims, Geraldine Walters, Harvey Burns, and George Johnson were all relatively healthy, but needed help with daily activities after surgery. Geraldine had a knee replaced, Harvey had a hip replaced and George had a stent put in his heart. Other than that, no one had any issues, except that they all came down with the flu after their surgeries. Geraldine and Harvey have unfortunately already been cremated, so we aren’t going to be able to get anything from them, but after George died, his daughter contacted the police. She knew the other two victims in passing and claimed she found it odd that three relatively healthy people died within such a short time and with no actual cause of death,” she continued. “She claimed that her father had never had the flu in his life; he never got sick.”

“It is odd,” Emily said, looking between the files of all three victims. “The likelihood of having that many healthy individuals come down with the flu during a time when the flu isn’t common and die suddenly in such a concentrated area is unlikely, but it could just be a coincidence, and with two of three already having been cremated, we’re going to have a difficult time proving that anything nefarious happened.”

Everyone agreed, wondering if this trip was going to turn out to be a waste. But better safe than sorry. “Well, working under the assumption that something nefarious is going down, what kind of person are we looking for?” Rossi asked.

“If they were actually sick, it would be considered an angel of mercy style killing,” Spencer started, “but given that they were relatively healthy, we are looking for someone sadistic, and although serial killers of this kind tend to be male, we definitely can’t rule out a female killer either. As a matter of fact, when it comes to this type of killer, a female is even more likely than the typical serial killer.”

JJ rolled her eyes. “Typical serial killer. We have such wonderful jobs, don’t we?”

“Alright,” Hotch started, “When we touch down, Emily, you go interview Geraldine’s son and daughter. JJ, take Harvey’s son. Reid, you and Morgan take George’s daughter and the in-home nurse he had, and Rossi, you and I will go to the funeral home that took care of all three funerals. Morgan and Reid, ask George’s daughter if she objects to her father being exhumed for an autopsy.”

As the plane started to descend, they all hoped that this was a false alarm, because if they did have some kind of angel of mercy, sadistic or otherwise, on their hands, they were going to be extremely difficult to catch - at least without another victim.

—–

With JJ, Emily, Hotch and Rossi off to pursue other avenues, Morgan and Reid headed off to interview George’s daughter and his at-home nurse. “Hello,” Morgan said as a young woman about 30 years old opened the door. “I’m Agent Morgan, this is Dr. Reid, are you Helena, George’s daughter?”

“Yes, come in,” she said, inviting the two agents inside. “Thank you for coming. Everyone says I’m overreacting, but I really feel like something is wrong.”

“It could be nothing,” Reid said, “But in cases like this where many people die in a short period of time in a concentrated area, we do what’s called an equivocal death investigation to determine the cause of death. Can you tell us about your father? How was his health beforehand?”

As the three sat down in the middle of the living room, alongside George’s at-home nurse, Fiona, Helena did her best to describe her father through the tears. “Besides his heart problems, which were genetic and he was ready for as he got older, he was unbelievably healthy. Heart problems run in our family. He had a 90% blockage in one of his arteries, despite the fact that he was healthier than I was, so he had a stent put in. That’s when I called Fiona to help him with his daily routine while I was at work.”

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Fiona stuttered, “He was such a sweet man.”

“Fiona,” Morgan asked, “How long had you been taking care of Mr. Johnson?”

She took a deep breath, linking her arm into Helena’s. The two had been friends since college. “A little over two weeks,” she said, “depending on how he was feeling, it could’ve been another two to four weeks.”

“And how long had he been sick?” Reid asked. 

“About four days.”

“Last two questions,” Morgan said, “Was there anyone but the two of you with him in the past four days? And is it okay if we exhume your father? There is a chance that something will show up on the autopsy.”

Fiona pulled out a card with the name and number of her in-home care agency on it. “I had a family emergency of my own to deal with earlier in the week, so I couldn’t make it here until the afternoon. I was told that the agency sent two different nurses to cover those mornings.”

“If exhuming my father proves that he was actually murdered, like I think he was, then you do whatever you need to.”

“Ok, thank you. Please let us know if you can think of anything else that might help,” Reid said as the two stood up to leave. 

Morgan and Reid walked outside, immediately contacting the agency to see who else treated Mr. Johnson. Spencer pulled out his phone to see a list of missed texts from the rest of the team. Emily and JJ both said that the first two victims’ children also said that their parents were ridiculously healthy, so coming down with the flu was out of the ordinary, while Hotch and Rossi said that the funeral home claimed there was nothing out of the ordinary. “Rossi purposely asked if anyone had any skin discoloration or if they could detect the scent of bitter almonds, but there was nothing out of the ordinary,” Reid said.

“What would that indicate?” Morgan asked as he pulled out into the street and toward the agency.

“Cyanide poisoning,” he replied. “But there was nothing.” As the two made their way to the agency, Spencer texted Y/N to let her know that he probably wouldn’t be back in time for their next tentative date. Thankfully, being in the same field, she was well aware of the difficulties and just extended her expertise if necessary. 

“You got another date set up?” Morgan asked, trying to talk about anything but the case for a moment.

“We did,” he replied, “But I have a feeling this case is going to have us here for a while.”

“Me too.”

—–

Before heading back to the station, where the rest of the team had already convened, Reid and Morgan headed to the agency, where the head of the facility referred them to Mr. Johnson’s other nurses, Sam Meyers and Maryann Trotta. 

“I don’t know,” Morgan said, leaving the agency and finally heading toward the station. “The way Maryann was talking about his symptoms, it was almost as if she hadn’t been treating him. She claimed he’d only been coughing slightly, while Fiona insists that he was violently ill.”

Spencer didn’t have a good feeling about her either. “She’s definitely hiding something. We just have to figure out what and why.”

And they needed to find out quickly. Minutes after they returned to the station, the local authorities got a call indicating there was another victim. “Jennifer Valesky died of flu-like symptoms about five blocks from George Johnson’s house. She was apparently healthy,” he said.

If they weren’t already feeling as though there was a killer on the loose, that cemented it. Four victims within a week and a half and in a now-17 block radius. “We have an angel of death in the area,” Hotch said.


	6. Chapter 6

“One of us needs to interview Maryann Trotta,” Reid said. “She’s hiding something. The way she spoke about Mr. Johnson, it was almost as if she hadn’t been treating him.”

As Hotch told Reid he could be the one to bring Maryann Trotta in, they received a call that Mr. Johnson’s body had been exhumed and was being sent to the local medical examiner’s office. “They are going to run whatever tests they can think of on tissues and hair and get back to us as soon as they can,” Hotch said. 

Rossi spoke up from the back of the room. “Aren’t there poisons that can be found in the bloodstream? What happens if it was one of those? Or an air bubble? Can that actually happen?”

“It can,” Reid interjected. “Your heart is like the fuel pump in an old car. Normally, its contracting chambers squeeze the blood out and force it through the circulatory system, like a fuel pump, but if you introduce an air embolus, your heart starts squeezing on that. Eventually, the air just compresses, blood flow stops and then your heart does. But if they were killed by injecting air or something else into the blood stream, then it’s not going to show up on someone who’s already been buried - at least if they were embalmed.”

“Alright,” Hotch said, “Jennifer Valesky’s body is being taken to the ME for an autopsy now, so we’ll be waiting on hers and on Mr. Johnson’s. In the meantime, Reid, you can go interview Maryann Trotta, and we’ll stay here and work on the profile.”

Garcia had called in moments before he left, so she quickly sent Reid the address for Ms. Trotta. Hopefully, she would be able to shed some light on whatever the hell was going on here.

——

Once Reid arrived at the address Garcia had given him, he knocked repeatedly, until Maryann opened the door, hiding half her face from his view. She was scared. Like she knew that someone was going to find out she was hiding something. If she knew someone was going to find out, why lie? He never understood that. “Ms. Trotta?” he said, pulling at his badging and flashing it in her direction. “My name is Dr. Spencer Reid with the FBI, I need to as you a couple of questions about your treatment of George Johnson.”

“Come in,” she said softly, closing the door and unhitching the lock. “I had a feeling you would come here.”

Then why lie? “Why is that?” he asked. By the darting look in her eyes, he sensed that she was petrified of something or someone or some situation and she desperately wanted to talk. “What made you think we were going to come back to question you again?”

She hesitated, closing her arms tighter around her body as she sat down on the couch. “I didn’t treat Mr. Johnson,” she said, barely audible above the noise of the lawnmower outside. 

“Then who did?” he asked. He had a feeling she hadn’t actually treated him, but he had no idea why. “Who treated Mr. Johnson? Look, I can tell you’re scared. You think you’re going to get in trouble. But you’ll be in more trouble if the person you’re protecting happens to be a killer.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she cried, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. “It was a floater.”

“What’s a floater?”

“Everyone at the agency uses the floaters in the area. A floater is someone who is someone that will lend out their services to people like me so we can pick up extra shifts. Make a little extra money,” she started. So these people were off the books. That’s why she was afraid. She was going to lose her job. Many of the nurses at the agency were. They could even lose their rights to practice.

Reid allowed her to take her time. She was petrified and he understood. Her livelihood was at stake. “Her name is Heidi Macauley. That’s the floater I used. I’m desperate for cash right now, and I know quite a few people that have used her and like her. She’s reliable, you know? And that’s what I need right now. I need reliable, steady cash, so I asked for her help that morning. I haven’t heard from her since.”

“Does she work for another agency, or a hospital that you know of?” he wondered. They needed to find her. It was likely that she either was, or knew the person they were looking for.

“Dignity Health,” she said, a tear falling from her eye as she realized how screwed she was. Reid felt sorry for her. She was just trying to make a living, and now she was probably going to lose her license. “She works two part-time jobs, but that is the only one I know of.”

With that information, Reid stood up to leave, doing the best he could to console Ms. Trotta, but nothing was working. As he walked out the door, she was sobbing. But he had the next valuable piece of information they needed. 

“Garcia,” he said after he dialed her number. “What information can you get for me on a Heidi Macauley. She works for Dignity Health.”

“Heidi, Heidi,” she muttered, tapping away at the keyboard. “Here she is, Heidi Macauley. Born to two loving parents nearly 30 years ago. Her birth was complicated. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, but thankfully she was okay. Her childhood was relatively uneventful and then she went to nursing school. Graduated at the middle of her class and then obtained two part-time jobs for Dignity and the local general hospital. Her mother died two years ago of a stroke; she wasn’t the picture of health, but she was relatively okay, until she had a stroke after a routine appendix removal. If she is who you’re looking for, there were no indicators in her background, at least on record.”

It was unlikely. Female serial killers were statistically less common than males, and ones without some kind of indicator for violence in their background were even less common. But it wasn’t impossible. “Okay, thanks Garcia.” Her mother died after a routine surgery; that couldn’t be a coincidence.

“At your service,” she said, “PG, over and out.”

——

“What did you find out, kid?” Morgan asked when he walked back into the station. 

“They were using a floater. The whole agency. Someone that would lend their services out so people could pick up extra shifts. Off the books,” he said. “Maryann didn’t treat Mr. Johnson. A woman named Heidi Macauley did.”

With that information, Hotch walked outside to the local authorities and told them to go pick her up. She needed to be brought in for an interview. “We have some preliminary results from Mr. Johnson’s and Mrs. Valency’s autopsies. George’s autopsy turned up nothing from tissue and hair tests, so if he was murdered, it was into the bloodstream. As for Jennifer, she had ethylene glycol in her system.”

“What’s that mean?” Emily asked.”Poison?”

“Yes,” Reid answered. “It’s most typically found in antifreeze.”

——

Within the hour, the authorities had located Heidi Macauley and brought her into the station. Seated in the office, behind the glass and isolated from the rest of the world, the members of the BAU looked in. She looked tired, but that was all that could be detected behind her eyes. Everything else was vacant. “I wasn’t sure this could be our killer,” JJ said. Heidi looked so ordinary. “But now…she looks like nothing affects her.”

“And her mother died after a routine surgery. That can’t be a coincidence,” Rossi stated. As he walked toward the interrogation room, the rest of the team waited. If she wasn’t who they were looking for, her interview would definitely help them narrow down the profile. 

Normally, upon entry, the one being interviewed wouldn’t say a word; they would wait to be spoken to, but when Rossi entered, she looked up and without missing a beat, she said, “You found me. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to catch me. People around here are just too stupid to notice anything.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Is that so?” Rossi said, his trademarked calm, cool and collected nature taking over despite the fact that this woman was nothing like they’d ever encountered before.

Nothing but a small smirk painted the corner of her mouth. It was extremely unsettling, even for a veteran like Rossi. “I’m 32 years old. I’ve been doing this for years. No one caught on.”

“Because you were too smart,” he said. “What happened? You slip up?” The look in her eyes went from cocky to fiery in milliseconds. Despite her being different than most other unsubs they came across in many ways, in other ways, she was so stereotypical it was almost comical. After more than 30 years on the job, Rossi knew what to say and how to say it to make any unsub sing the song of their crimes. 

He could play her like a fiddle, but in this case it seemed like she wanted to be played.

“Purposefully, yes. I just got so used to doing it, I got bored. I don’t care anymore if anyone knows.” If she was 32 years old and had become a licensed nurse at 22, she could have been doing this for nearly a decade. He asked her how long, and she’d confirmed his suspicions. A decade of killing.

“It started with your mother, didn’t it? The not caring? When she died two years ago?” She only nodded her head.

“Tell me about what you’ve done. When you first started,” Rossi said. “What made you start killing?”

Despite the talk they’d had thus far, she hadn’t technically admitted anything, and given the physical evidence they had with their four victims, it would be hard to prove she was the one that killed Jennifer Valesky. But a confession would be the nail in her coffin and she seemed willing to hammer it in herself. “It started like a lot of people like me…” she said.

—–

On the opposite side of the glass, the rest of the team stared in awe. “She started as an angel of mercy,” Reid said, just as Heidi confirmed it. Apparently, she was under the delusion that she was helping people. She started in a hospital right after she graduated and would periodically “ease the suffering” as she claimed, of people that were terminally ill. 

“The first person I ever killed asked me to do it,” she said, surprising everyone outside, as well as Rossi. 

“Is that so?”

Her name was Gertrude Singer. She was terminally ill with cancer of the bone, and she didn’t have much time left. She was also in excruciating pain, so she asked Heidi to end her suffering. “I figured she wanted to die,” she said. “She was going to die. Why shouldn’t she have been allowed to end her pain? I injected an air bubble into her IV. Within the day she was gone. That’s how it started - with her and others like her. However, she was the only one that asked. When I realized I was the one who had actually taken her life…I felt this indescribable feeling, and I wanted more of it.”

“What kind of feeling?” JJ said out loud. 

Reid didn’t want to say the answer. But he knew. Sometimes he was afraid of how well he could read people. “Power.”

“It was intoxicating,” she crooned, sending shivers up Emily’s spine. Thank god Garcia wasn’t here to hear this, because she’d be screaming and running to the shower for a proper scrubbing of her body and brain. “That feeling of watching someone’s life leave them and knowing you did it? Nothing like it.”

“But something changed when your mother died, didn’t it?” Rossi asked. Normally, the team would still be trying to gather evidence at this stage, but that was because confessions weren’t so easily come by. So much about this case was different. Reid wasn’t affected by every unsub anymore, but this one was unsettling; she’d probably stay with him for a long time.

The vibrating against his skin pulled him out his head. “Something up?” JJ asked. 

“It’s Y/N,” he said. “I’ll be right back. How are you?” As he walked outside to take the call, he could hear the slithering of her voice and it made his skin crawl. 

“I’m fine. Wish we could be going on another date, but otherwise okay. You?”

Goosebumps traveled up his spine as he recalled the unsub’s words. “Our killer is a woman. An angel of death, and she’s been killing for years. She…I don’t know why she’s getting to me given all the people we’ve come into contact with, but she is.”

“I’ll try and take your mind off things when you get back,” she said.

“Is that a promise?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll let you get back to things. Stay strong…you know, stubborn. Like you normally do.”

“Oh, shut up,” he laughed as he said goodbye and hung up the phone. It was a good thing he’d taken that call, because as soon as he returned to the glass partition outside the interrogation room, her voice crawled back up his skin.

“When my mother had her appendix out she was insufferable,” Heidi started again. “She was not a nice woman and when she had to depend on others it was even worse. Nothing I did was good enough. I had been killing people who were terminal for eight years at that point, but that night, when she just wouldn’t let up…that was the first time I felt like killing, even though she would’ve been perfectly healthy.”

“So your mother is the reason you started killing healthy people rather than the terminally ill,” Rossi continued. One might say he was giving her the rope the hang herself with, but she knew exactly what she was saying. It was purely conversation at this point.

Outside the room, Spencer wished this would end, so they could go home. He needed to get out of his head. He needed to get her out of his head. “Yes,” she said. “Any drug addict will tell you that over time, you need more and more of the drug to get high. Killing was my drug, so after a while, killing people who needed it, who were in pain - that wasn’t enough. I needed more, so I started with my mother. I used antifreeze, like Jennifer Valesky.”

Well there was the confirmation they needed for one of their current victims. “Is that all you used? That and air bubbles?” Rossi wondered.

“No,” she laughed. She laughed. Reid could barely contain himself. “I used whatever I thought might go undetected until a couple weeks ago. Arsenic, cyanide, smothering, air bubbles, antifreeze…it didn’t matter. But a couple weeks ago I realize it was never going to be enough. That’s why I decided to get caught. Tell my story. And let the justice system do whatever it was going to do. Like I said, Agent Rossi. I’m tired.”

That was really all they needed to hear. “So you also killed Geraldine, Harvey and George?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve had enough. Because it’s never going to be enough.”

“Last question.” it was the one that everyone had on their minds. After 10 years of this, did she even know how many people she’d killed? Rossi asked her and she looked up, staring into the glass, knowing that there were people behind it. 

“Honestly, I lost count after 228. That’s when I got bored.”

—–

On the plane back, no one really said anything. What could you say about someone who had almost gleefully claimed to have taken over 200 lives? 

“So what are you doing when we get back?” Morgan asked, shaking his head to try and get Heidi’s voice out of his head. 

“Going out with Y/N,” Reid replied. “I need to not stay home and think about this. What about you?”

“Sleep.”

“Ditto,” he heard from Emily, JJ and Hotch. Rossi would probably end up staying up and having a smoke. 

After another hour, they were home and he was on his way to Y/N’s apartment. 

“Hey, stubborn,” she laughed. “You okay?”

He wasn’t, but he didn’t know why. What about her had rubbed him so the wrong way? Her smile dropped as she realized something was wrong. “Come here,” she whispered, enveloping him in her arms. “Do you want to come inside?”

Her lips grazed his as she brought him inside, shutting the door behind her. “Yes.”


	8. Chapter 8

As Spencer made his way inside, Y/N pressed her lips to his. “It’s okay,” she said. “Do you wanna talk about it?” 

“Not now,” he breathed, bringing his hand up to the side of her neck. “I mean, I don’t want you to think that this is all I want, but I just can’t…”

She brought her finger to his lips. “Spence, it’s okay. We may not have been dating for long, but we’ve worked together for a long time. I think I know you well enough to know you’re the type to call the next morning. Plus, sometimes sex is sex. Sometimes sex is comfort. Sometimes it’s different things to different people. I’m good.” Standing up on her tiptoes, Y/N leaned in, clutching the sides of his face and arching into his body as she peeled his suit jacket and shirt off, getting stuck for a moment when she tried to push the tie up over his head. 

“Graceful,” he laughed, with the tie knot stuck his mouth, his smile the first one she’d seen since he walked in the door. “Have you never taken off a tie before?”

“Shut up,” she chuckled, her laugh vibrating against the side of his neck. “My former boyfriends haven’t been so put together.” Her tongue glided against the vein in his neck as she pulled them toward the bedroom. Granted, the two of them hadn’t always gotten along, but she’d wanted him for years, if only sexually. This would work for both of them. She’d get the sex she wanted and he’d get the comfort he needed.

Once they’d tripped their way into her bedroom, Spencer stumbling out of his pants as she ripped the shirt up over her head, they toppled down onto the mattress, barely clothed and desperate for skin-on-skin contact. As he stepped out of his boxers, she peeled her panties off, opening her legs for him as he dipped his head between them. Her normally sensitive center was even more needy now that he was up-close-and-personal, his tongue sliding up her slickened slit, and all the way up to her mouth, taking it in a feverish kiss.  
“Fuck, Spence,” she breathed. “Come here.” She crawled backward toward the top of the bed as he came to hover over her. On another night, slow, tender lovemaking might have been the need, but tonight wasn’t that night; she needed him and he needed her - albeit in different ways. Spencer positioned himself at her opening and slid in smoothly, the sweat building on their skin as they clung to each other. “Spencer…oh god…fuck,” she cried. “Harder.”

He gladly obliged, picking up the pace of his thrusts as she wrapped her legs around his waist as tightly as she could and using them to pull him deeper. “Oh, god, Y/N,” he moaned. She could tell he was close. Reaching down between them, he rubbed her sensitive bundle of nerves as he continued his movements, sliding all the way in and all the way out with purpose. “I’m gonna…oh god.”

“Fuck…yea,” she cried out into his neck as her body arched off the bed. As she rode her high, he came down from his, their bodies sliding against each other. “That was…wow.”

Spencer laughed as he turned onto his back and pulled the blanket up to cover them both. “That was…amazing. And also exactly what I needed.”

“It’s what a lot of guys need,” she chuckled, pushing back into him and grabbing his hand to bring around her. “I’m assuming you’re staying the night?”

He pressed a heated kiss into the crook of her neck as they drifted off to sleep. “Absolutely.”  
—-

The following morning, Y/N’s alarm rang at the same time it always did - 6:00 AM. “Morning,” she mumbled, turning into his embrace. He was smiling this morning - definitely an improvement. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Much better, thank you,” he said, quickly adding with a laugh, “I mean thank you for asking, not thank you for the sex - although that too. I mean…”

She snorted as she pushed herself up off the bed. “I know what you mean. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me,” she said, taking his mouth in a morning kiss.

Y/N got up first, quickly jumping in the shower as Spencer convinced himself to wake up and not call out of work for the day. After she got out, he got up and took a quick shower as well. “I’m going to need to stop by my apartment before work, otherwise everyone is going to know what happened last night and I’d rather keep that as private as possible for a while.”

Laughing as she pulled up her dark wash jeans, Y/N agreed to stop by his apartment so he could change into new clothes and drive his own car into work. “Spence, do you mind if I ask you something?” she wondered as they walked down to her car.

“Sure, what is it?”

She didn’t want to pry, but she also wanted him to know that she cared. “Do you wanna talk about why that case hit you so hard? Because I think it’s deeper than the amount of victims. Although, dear god. That’s the most in BAU history right?”

The smile on his face fell as he opened the passenger side door and hopped in. “Yea, at least confirmed. The BAU dealt with a man named Freddie Goran before I even started and he was rumored to have more than 300 victims, but they weren’t all confirmed. As for what about it got to me, I was thinking about it as we fell asleep. I think it’s because of my mother.”

“How so?” Y/N knew she had schizophrenia, but that was the extent of what she knew of her - that and her name was Diana.

“Although she can take of herself now,” he started, “There might come a time when she needs a nurse to take care of her. This woman just started killing people, healthy or not, when they trusted her. Like…it could’ve been her.”

While she pulled away from the curb and into the street, she placed her hand on his arm and felt his hand come to cover hers. “It could have. But it wasn’t,” she said, turning toward him as she stopped at a red light. “Plus, you would interview the hell out of someone before you let them take care of her right?”

“Of course,” he said, fiddling with his fingers as he tried to get rid of some of the nervous energy he was holding inside. “But there’s no guarantee some psychopath like Heidi Macauley won’t slip through the cracks.”

She did understand where he was coming from. His mother was everything to him. The thought of someone like that being in contact with her own parents sent shivers down her spine. “True, but let me ask you this,” she said, turning onto his street. “As soon as you met Heidi, you knew something was wrong with her, right? She was unsettling?”

“Yea…”

“But would she seem unsettling to anyone else? Did the people around her say anything bad about her?”

Not too many people had said a whole lot about her, but Maryann Trotta had said that the agency tended to use her as a floater a lot - that she was good. “No one really had anything bad to say, no.”

She smiled as they both got out of the car and walked up to his apartment. “Then that means that you knew something was wrong because of your skills. What I mean to say is that you’re a fantastic profiler. One of the top in your field and you only work with the best, so if someone comes to interview for a theoretical nursing position for your mother, then your profiling skills would most likely alert you if anything wasn’t okay with them. Don’t doubt how good you are at your job. That and your love for your mother should be enough to keep her from harm.”

“Thanks,” he said, pulling her close to kiss the top of her head before they entered his apartment. They still had time before either one of them needed to be in for normal work day, so Spencer took his time changing, until Y/N called from the living room, where she was grabbing a glass of orange juice.

“Spence! We need to get in as soon as possible!” she called out, causing him to run out had clothed. “Apparently, we both have a case.”

“As in, the same one?” he asked, fastening the buttons of his shirt and pulling a sweater vest on over it.

“Yea, and I have two victims to examine.”


	9. Chapter 9

“College roommates Colin Kincaid and Robert Mobley were found in an alleyway outside a local bar with their genitals cut off,” Hotch started as Reid walked into the Bureau that morning. After getting changed into new clothes, he and Y/N took separate cars so she could get to examining these two victims. “By the lack of blood in the alleyway, it’s likely that they weren’t killed there, but dumped.”

As JJ rifled through the pictures, handing one off to Spencer who was just sitting down, she noted the brutality of the wounds. “The one victim looks like a clean slice, the other…”

“The other looks like it was ripped off,” Morgan said, shaking with the thought. For some reason anytime something happened to one guy’s parts, it was a community feel, with all guys subtly protecting themselves. 

“Oh my god,” Garcia exclaimed, walking into the room to see the grotesque picture on the screen. Freezing in place, she pointed at Rossi, who was holding the remote, and then pointed at the screen. “Please, tell me when it’s gone. I don’t need that in 1080p.”

“All good,” he said, causing the pictures to vanish and the victims’ pictures to come up instead. “We all have hard copies anyway.”

While Penelope booted up her laptop to start a general search, Emily made her contribution. “Whoever we’re dealing with definitely has a lot of rage built up. These men could be surrogates for someone that abused them in the past.”

“Considering the injuries, they could also be sexual assailants themselves and this is about revenge,” Reid said. For the only wound to be in the genital area was odd, unless that was the source of the unsub’s anger for one reason or another. 

“Garcia,” Hotch said, taking what Reid said and running with it, “Do either of the victims have a record?”

Garcia slapped away on the keyboard, the pitter-patter of keys sounding like a light falling of rain. “Oh do they ever,” she started, immediately pulling up not only their records, but two articles from local papers and posting them to the TV screen. “Colin and Robert were both accused of raping a recent immigrant to the United States, Magdalena Sanchez. Ms. Sanchez claims that the two raped her while she was on her way home from work one day last spring, but both boys have fathers with quite a lot of moolah to throw around if you know what I mean.” As she filtered through the information, Emily said what everyone was thinking. 

“I hate the fact that we have to find who did this and put them away.”

“Me too,” Rossi replied. “But we can’t have vigilantes running around.”

Emily sighed, “I know, but I wish people couldn’t play the system.”

“Me too. It’s disgusting,” Garcia interrupted, “but Girl Genius here has a little more information for you. Not only did both boys have the best defense lawyer in the area on retainer, courtesy of their fathers of course, but the fathers also made generous donations to the college, presumably to have them downplay what happened.”

Spencer scoffed. “Disgusting.”

“Our likely profile is that of a vigilante,” Hotch said, starting up with their orders for the day. “Which means we are already ahead of the game in regards to tracking him down. JJ, I want you to go to the college and interview the dean. Given that these boys had the best defense lawyer in the area, I doubt we are going to be able to interview the fathers just yet. Morgan, you and Rossi go to the alley where they were found. Emily, I want you to go and interview Ms. Sanchez. And Reid, you and I will head to the ME’s office to see if she’s made on progress on our two victims.”

—–

On the way to the ME’s office, which at this point, Reid wanted to be going to alone, Hotch hinted at the topic of the two of them. “She’s good,” Reid said, wanting to be truthful but also not wanting to divulge too much. “We’re good. And we have no problem working together just so you know.”

“I never doubted that,” Hotch said, pulling up to the ME’s office. “Let’s go see if she has any information for us.”

If Reid had come alone, he would’ve walked in and kissed her (even though it had only been a few hours since they’d last seen each other), but with Hotch in tow, he knew it wouldn’t be appropriate. Although neither was the makeout session in her office before they started dating. “Morning, Agent Hotchner,” she greeted. If Reid were her, he would’ve said good morning to both, because leaving him out would undoubtedly lead his boss to believe that he’d spent the night at her place. “There honestly isn’t a whole lot to discuss when it comes to cause of death. Both men died from loss of blood directly related to having their penises cut off,” she grimaced.

“We noticed from the crime scene photos that one looked like it was cleaner than the other,” Reid said, attempting to act as professional as possible. It was a little difficult considering she’d decided to wear a jewel green tank top and blazer that morning. The top was dangerously low, but she didn’t seem to care. That was another reason he liked her, much more confident and carefree than he. 

When Y/N looked up she could see a smile paint the corners of Hotchner’s face. Of course he knew about last night. Spencer only worked with the best after all. But if he wanted to be aloof about the two of them then that was fine by her. “Yes, one was cleaner than the other. Robert’s looks like it was cut off with a straight-edge knife, while Colin’s was removed with a serrated knife. Given that the only wound was the unfortunate appendage removal, I can’t tell what kind of knife was used on Robert, but Colin’s I will be able to tell the exact model after a little more time. I just haven’t gotten to that yet.”

“So two different knives, or two killers with a different knife?” Spencer thought out loud. 

Hotch knew the unlikelihood of two different killers in a situation like this - that at least from the looks of it - was very pointedly about sexual revenge, but he also knew it couldn’t be ruled out either. “It’s likely just different knives, but this early on, we obviously can’t rule out the possibility of two killers.”

“Do you have any inkling about what this was about?” Y/N asked. She knew Spencer would tell her if they were alone, but with Agent Hotchner here, it was a toss up. “This seems like a very pointed attack, at least from a medical point of view.”

“Obviously, we aren’t sure yet, but both men were accused of rape. Never convicted,” he replied. 

Y/N looked up, glancing between the head agent and her boyfriend, wondering if she should say what she was thinking, but if she knew Emily, and she was pretty sure she did, Emily had already said what she was thinking. “Do you have to find who did this? Because I’m sure you will, but I’m also not sure if I want you too.”

“Unfortunately yes,” Spencer said. “That’s all you can tell us for now, right?”

She shook her head, promising she’d be in contact later with any knew information. “Keep me updated.”

“We will,” Hotch said. “Thank you.”

As Hotch left the room, Spencer turned around quickly to give Y/N a kiss goodbye. “See you later.”

“Bye, babe,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

—–

Back at the local station, Morgan, Hotch, Reid and Rossi went over the information they’d gathered; Emily and JJ had yet to return. “Y/N said that Robert was cut with a straight-edge knife, while Colin was cut with a serrated knife,” Spencer said as he sat down at the table. 

Hotch had stopped by the lead officer and overheard a few of the officers talking about Colin and Robert’s case. Apparently, the cops didn’t believe the men were rapists. This precinct was also the one that handled their case. Carefully, he shut the door and called Garcia. “Garcia.”

“You’ve reached the fountain of all knowledge, boss man. How may I help you?”

“Garcia, I need you to check into the financial background’s of the cops at the station, specifically the ones that handled Colin and Robert’s case.”

“You think the fathers of the victims paid off some of the cops too?” she asked incredulously. “If they took any nefarious bribes, your minion will be sure to find the evidence. I will hit you back when I have something.”

“What did the two of you find in the alleyway?” Hotch asked of Morgan and Rossi. 

Morgan deferred to Rossi as he was looking through papers. “There was minimal blood in the alley. There’s no way they were killed there especially if Y/N said that they died from loss of blood. It was definitely a body dump.”

“So all we need to find is the actual crime scene, the murder weapons, and the killer or killers,” Spencer said unenthusiastically. “Hopefully, Emily and JJ come back with something useful, because right now, we don’t have much.”

—–

Knocking on the door outside Magdalena Sanchez’s apartment, Emily waited for the chance to interview her. It was unlikely that she was the killer, but they needed to rule her out. When she answered the door, she could see how scared she was, her eyes darting from side to side and down to badge Emily was holding. 

“Hola, Mi nombre es Emily Prentiss. Estoy con el FBI. Puedo hacerle algunas preguntas sobre Colin Kincaid y Robert Mobley?”

The woman began to close the door. Emily thought she’d lost her chance, but she unlocked it, inviting her inside with a quiet smile. “Que hay de ellos?”

She began by telling her that both of her accused rapists were dead - the relief washing over her as tears cascaded down her cheeks. “Aye dios mio,” she exclaimed as her hands came up to cover her face. She has been scared to go to work. With them gone, she might finally be able to not live in fear - at least from them. Despite all she gained from their deaths, Emily knew the minute she said they’d died, that Magdalena wasn’t the one that killed them. 

“Sabes quién pudo haber hecho esto?” Do you know who could’ve done this? Magdalena said she didn’t have anyone here. Her family was back home because she’d come here for work. Since she got here, about a year and a half prior, she’d been working for a cleaning company that made a point of hiring immigrants needing a fresh start. Emily wondered if anyone made a point of asking about the two men before.

“Not personally,” she said, but someone she didn’t know, a man, had asked her if she knew the two men, pointing to them in an article and asking if she was the victim. 

“And you don’t know who he was?” Emily asked. This was a true vigilante. 

Magdalenda shook her head. “I’ve never seen him b-before,” she stuttered, “But if he killed them, he is mi héroe.” Before leaving, Prentiss asked if Magdalena would come to the station the next morning to give a description of the man. Thankfully, she agreed.

“Thank you so much for your time, Ms. Sanchez,” Emily said, placing her hand over hers as she got up to leave. Magdalena definitely wasn’t their killer, but at least one of them was probably this mystery man, taking revenge on rapists that bought their way through the system.


	10. Chapter 10

“Do you know what I would do to you if I wasn’t tied up right now?” the man said, straining against the ties that bound him.

Cara looked down at him with dead eyes. “For a man that’s tied up, you’re not that smart. I know exactly what you’d do. That’s why you’re here. You’re here because of Dillon Scinto,” she enunciated, getting right up in his face. “You remember that name, don’t you?” 

At the mention of the boy’s name, the man’s face went flat. He thought he’d left that all behind him. With his connections, he had been able to post bail and then a friend got him a new identity, instead of John Cardenas, he was now Jack Salmassi. “You raped that boy after school every single day, didn’t you? Then you spooked when you thought he was going to tell his parents, so you killed him. You put your hand around his throat and squeezed until you saw the light leave his eyes.” 

As a dedicated college student, Cara thought she deserved a night out with her friends, so that night, the night that changed her life forever, she got dressed in her best top, skirt and heels and partied the night away. Given how long it had been since she’d been out, she drank a little more than she intended and ended up throwing up outside the bar. That’s when he arrived. Bryan Stoppard. Another student at the university that felt entitled to whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. She tried to push him away. She screamed no over and over again. She screamed for help. But no one came. And 10 minutes later she was crying in the alleyway - with the ability to never feel truly safe again.

Realizing why he was here, knowing that his past had caught up with him, Jack stilled, searching this woman’s eyes for anything he could use to manipulate her. But she continued. “Then you used your connections to pay your way out of the system and run from what you’d done. That’s why you’re here. Because I’ve had enough.”

Bryan Stoppard, who even in her altered state, was positively her attacker, had a very rich, very high-ranking business executive father, who paid all the right people, leaving him not only not in prison, but right back where she was. College. That was the day she dropped out - and vowed to take revenge on him and others like him. As Cara continued, telling him of how her own attacker paid his way out of trouble, she unbuttoned his pants, despite his best efforts to keep her away. “Do you wanna know what your undoing was?” she asked. “How I found you? Decided on you?” He said nothing. “The internet. People think that because they sit behind a screen, no one will ever find them. No one will hold you accountable for the things you say. Well I found you - on Twitter of all places. Thanks for exposing yourself to me. It gives me great pleasure to do this.”

With a sharp twist, she grabbed him and brought down her knife, severing the offending appendage from his body as he screamed bloody murder. That was the great thing about her day job. The job she’d gotten purposely to stay away from the general public, away from the men she couldn’t trust. Her company was in the process of closing down an old warehouse, but it was caught up in legal problems, so no one showed themselves here. “Go ahead and scream. No one will hear you.”

—–

The next morning, Magdalena showed up at the station and gave a description of the man that approached her. The man they believed was connected to these murders in some way. By description, he was a very average looking man. White, short brown hair, light brown eyes, average weight and height. There was nothing extraordinary about him, but the forensic artist was amazing, so Garcia ran the picture through the system to see if she could find a match. Within a couple of hours, they had a match - and a new body.

“We’re looking for a Michael Plasket,” Hotch said, tacking the mystery man’s picture onto the board. “Reid, I need you to go back to the ME’s office for information on the third victim, while the rest of us check to see what the connection is between the first two victims and this one.”

—–

“Jack Salmassi and John Cardenas,” Y/N said as soon as Spencer walked in the door much to his confusion. They only had one victim, right? “His body was found with two ID’s - one for each name, but they are both him. Same picture. This victim was even more brutalized than the last one - and I find myself incapable of feeling bad.”

“I guess I don’t really blame you,” he replied. “But we still need to find who did this. We can’t have vigilantes running around.”

Y/N wasn’t so sure. “Why not? I’d sure like revenge on a few people.”

“What do you mean?” Spencer asked. Was there something about this case she connected with? 

“Spence, I…” she started, watching as his face changed from confused to sad. “I wasn’t raped, but I…I was assaulted in college. He molested me before I was able to push him away and run for my life.”

He was stunned. It just proved that literally anyone could be assaulted. There was no ‘type.’ “Y/N…I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you, Spence, but it did put me on the path I’m on now,” she said, “So something came from it.”

Spencer walked around to her side of the table and pulled her close to him, with her swaying in his embrace for a few moments in silence. “I’m still sorry. What can you tell me about Jack slash John?”

“Jack John had his genitals cut off, just like the last two. Serrated knife, like Colin Kincaid. The serrations would cause more pain, so either the killer is deciding on this knife because it causes more pain, or there is some special circumstance that leads them to use the serrated as opposed to the straight-edge knife,” she said, walking to the other side of the table to pull up the sheet. “However, there is a slight difference from the last victims to this one.” As she pulled up the sheet, Spencer noticed it was quite a big difference. The victim’s right hand was missing.

“The hand was severed, actually sawed is a better word, off with the same knife that was used to remove his genitals,” Y/N said, holding up a very long, serrated knife. “This is your likely murder weapon. An Orblue stainless steel serrate bread slicer knife.” Spencer involuntarily clutched his legs together. Ow. “Judging by the tissue near the severed hand, it was sawed off after the other thing was sliced off. That’s where most of the blood loss came from. The hand was after.”

Given that the first two men had their penises cut off, it was likely that this man’s hand was also involved in whatever crime he committed. “Okay, anything else?”

“I do have a some kind of substance that was found on his pelvic region, as well as a flake of something else I haven’t identified, but I need time to process that. So, I’ll call you later?” she asked, giving him a small smile. 

“Yea,” he replied, giving her a soft kiss before he left. “Call me as soon as you can.”

—–

“We’re still tracking down Michael Plasket,” JJ said as Reid walked back into the local station. “And Garcia’s got some news for us, but…we have to close the door.”

As Spencer walked in, he closed the door behind him so the team members were the only ones in the room. “Do I ever have news for you. Be careful over there. The two cops that handled the case for Colin and Robert, had suspicious financial activity in the months after the rape of Magdalena Sanchez. For the three months after, both men received just under $4,200 every Friday, and then it suddenly stopped. When I counted it up, it equaled…”

“$50,000,” Reid said. “Each. Did you trace the money back, Garcia?”

“For a Boy Genius, that was a dumb question. Of course I traced it back. Each cop was paid off by one of the fathers, so we can bust those cops too, right? Because I’m livid over here and watching them get arrested due to my quick sleuthing might make me feel a little bit better,” she said, the sound of keys tapping filling the following silence.

“Hey PG,” Emily said, “What did you find out about Jack Salmassi? Because of course, I know you found a sea of information.” She turned back toward Reid with a wink. He just stuck his tongue out at her. “Jack Salmassi, aka John Cardenas, was, AND STILL SOMEHOW WAS before his death, a school teacher. Five years ago, Jack, then John, was accused of raping and murdering a 10-year-old sweet angel boy named Dillon Scinto. According to the ME at the time, Dillon was repeatedly raped and then strangled using the assailant’s right hand.”

That made sense. Now they had their answer as to why Jack’s hand was also cut off. “So his genitals were cut off because of the rape and the hand for the murder,” Rossi said. “How did he go from John to Jack?”

“Patience, my liege,” Garcia said. “I wasn’t finished giving my spiel. John at that time, was connected to a local hardware store franchise owner with a lot of cash on hand. It was assumed that he paid John’s way out and set him up with a new identity. Doesn’t this mean that not only is the unsub targeting rapists, but they’re also targeting rapists that paid their way out of the system?”

“Are you done now?” Hotch asked with a smile. “Wouldn’t want to interrupt your spiel.”

“Yes, my other liege, I am all finished.”

“Then the answer to your question is yes; the unsub is targeting those that paid their way out.” While they normally would give the profile at this time, they decided to hold back some information, mainly about people being paid off. They didn’t want to alert the dirty cops until the case was over.

“One last question, babygirl? Did you find any connection at all between the three victims?” In order to track down the man that contacted Magdalena, who was in some way connected to these murders, they needed to find a connection between the victims other than their shared past. Nothing explained how they were picked.

“The only thing I could find was that all three victims were big users of social media, Facebook, Twitter and the like.”

“Okay, Garcia,” Hotch said, “We need you to dig deeper into that. That’s where the connection has to be. Once again, they disconnected Garcia from the phone and seconds later, Y/N called Spencer, so he walked outside to take the call.

“Hey Y/N,” he said, hoping to God that she had some kind of information about whatever substance was found on the victim’s pelvic bone, “Find anything?”

“Your killer is in all likelihood, a woman,” she said. 

“How do you know?”

“The substance I found on the pelvic region was lotion, specifically a cherry blossom lotion from Bath & Body Works.” He could hear her slide across the room in her chair, probably going between her computer and the body. “As for the fleck, that was a flake of nail polish. I have a specific on that too. It’s OPI nail lacquer black onyx color.”

Both things could’ve been from a woman, but there was nothing that kept it from being a man. And they knew they were looking for Michael Plasket. “How can you be so sure it’s a woman?” 

“Spencer this is what I do for a living. I know you’re a genius, but this is my area of expertise.”

“I’m not doubting that!” he yelled a little louder than he had intended. “But black nail polish is commonly used among certain men and the lotion could’ve been there from a woman that Jack was involved with. What makes you so sure the lotion is from the killer?”

“I don’t know. It’s a feeling.” She normally didn’t operate on feelings. She operated on facts, but in her mind, she just knew that the killer was a woman. The man they were looking for was involved in some other way. 

“Well, we can’t go after someone based on a feeling, Y/N! I need facts! You can’t just base your findings on feelings because of your background.” Shit. That came out wrong.

“Excuse me!” she screamed. “Yea, I was assaulted as a student, but I am a professional and I conduct myself as such. Frankly, I don’t want you to catch whoever is doing this. I hope they keep going for as long as they possibly can, but I am doing my job, and my professional opinion, based on facts and the brands of product I found, lead me to believe that you’re looking for a woman, alright? So fuck off!” All of a sudden, he heard nothing. That was the problem with cell phones, you could angrily hit the end call button, like you could slam down the phones of old. 

He hadn’t meant to accuse her of anything. He knew she was a professional. It just came out wrong. Spencer brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezing slightly before heading back inside. 

“You okay, kid?” Morgan asked as he came back inside. “What did Y/N say?” Spencer did his best to just recount the facts without giving away that they’d just had a fight, but he knew they could tell. 

“She claimed our killer was a woman. Lotion and a fleck of black nail polish was found on his pelvic region, which leads her to believe it’s a woman.”

Emily nodded. “It could be. But it could also be a man.”

“That’s what I said!”

An uncomfortable silence fell just as a man was walked into the station - it was Michael Plasket. This was definitely the man that approached Magdalena. One of the first things Spencer noticed were Mr. Plasket’s hands. The nails were painted with black polish.


	11. Chapter 11

It had taken a while for her to open up to him, but it was okay. He understood. Especially after she told him about what happened to her in college. Michael promised her that no matter what, he would be there to protect her. He loved her. He loved her more than words could describe. That sweet smile and those shining eyes. Those beautiful things about her that someone tried to take away; he’d almost succeeded.

After weeks of reticence on her part, she agreed to go out with him, but only if it was somewhere really public; she was afraid. She wanted plenty of eyewitnesses - that was fine by him. He suggested the local fair that had popped up. They could go on rides, eat fair food, play some of those rigged games and maybe he’d win her a stuffed animal. 

While she had been nervous when they first arrived, within the first hour, she was smiling and laughing; she even slipped her hand into his. They did everything he’d suggested, she even won crappy bracelet that she’d placed around his wrist, and by the end of the night they went their separate ways in separate cars, but not before sharing a perfect kiss that he would never forget. It was the moment they fell in love and knew they’d be together forever.

—–

As Michael was walked into the interrogation room, the team gathered outside the window to observe.

“He’s involved,” Emily said, “But I don’t think he’s the killer.”

That was the second time in as many hours that Spencer had heard someone say that. “Why? Y/N found black nail polish in the sample she took. He asked Magdalena about the first two victims. It fits.”

“Too easily,” JJ said, coming up behind Spencer and leaning against his shoulder. “These crimes required a certain amount of brutality and detachment. He’s nervous. His eyes are darting back and forth. He’s a little bit sweaty…and he keeps picking at that bracelet in order to calm himself down.”

“You think he’s protecting someone?” Rossi asked. 

Both ladies said yes. “I think the killer’s a woman,” JJ replied. 

Spencer heaved a huge sigh as his head fell in his hands. Maybe Y/N was right. Maybe her sense that the killer was a woman was all she needed. JJ seemed to be behind her. And he’d doubted her. She was never going to let him live that down. “What’s the matter, kid?” Morgan asked.

“When I was on the phone with Y/N, she said she thought the killer was a woman too. And I questioned her. I accused her of making assumptions off feelings rather than facts…and we fought about it.” It still could’ve been him though. He was seen by the victim of the first two victims. He could be nervous because he was about to be put away for murder. And snapping his bracelet could just be a nervous habit. Although his actions could indicate that he was protecting someone, they could also indicate that he was just nervous. It could go either way.

Morgan clapped Spencer on the back of the shoulder. “I would suggest apologizing to her once this is over,” he said. “Either one of you could be right. We need to interrogate him to be sure.” 

“Okay,” Hotch said, rifling through the file in his hand. “Spencer, you take the interrogation.” 

“Show him the victims’ pictures,” Emily said out of nowhere. “The killer would have no problem looking at them. Someone else would likely look away.” 

As Spencer walked into the room, he introduced himself, and told Michael he needed to ask him about Colin Kincaid, Robert Mobley, and Jack Salmassi aka John Cardenas. He pulled on the pictures and placed them on the table. Spencer could tell from the twitch in his neck that his first instinct was to turn away, but he didn’t. He looked right at them. “Do you know these three men?” he asked.

Taking a deep breath, Michael leaned back in his chair. “I’ve seen them before. They were disgusting human beings who deserved what they got.”

“And what did they get?” Spencer asked. If he was going to give a false confession, he wasn’t going to be able to recount all the details correctly. 

“Robert got a quicker death. A less painful one,” he said, pushing the picture of Robert toward Spencer. “He was cut in one fell swoop. Colin though, he was mouthy, kept saying and I quote ‘the bitch was asking for it,’ so he deserved more pain. Used the serrated knife.”

He knew the difference between the two knives, and which one was used on who, but he was also using language that indicated that he wasn’t there. He was recounting it like a story, not like someone that had first-hand knowledge. The unsettling feeling in Spencer’s stomach grew as he continued. Something wasn’t right.

—–

Dammit. Michael had turned himself in. She knew him, better than anyone- he’d do anything for her. He was going to confess. Colin and Robert weren’t her first. She’d been doing this a little longer than the feds thought, but once Michael figured out what she was doing with the names he got her, he said he understood. He was behind her. Then they discussed that if he were to ever get caught, she wasn’t to come for him. She thought it weird when he asked for every detail of what she’d done, but now she knew. He was going to take the fall. Said he’d protect her - no matter what.

With Michael in custody, she went back to her apartment and grabbed what she could, hopping in her car with tears in her eyes and leaving the city behind - for a while or forever she wasn’t sure yet.

—–

“What about Jack Salmassi?” Spencer said, pushing the picture of the third victim in Michael’s direction. “What did he deserve? What did you do to him?” Michael kept trying to avoid using the language that would directly incriminate him, so Spencer tried leading him to do so, but it didn’t work.

“He deserved everything he got too. Kept talking about how much he liked Dillon Scinto, that it actually hurt him to kill him, but he did. Strangled him with his right hand. Can you believe that? He said he was hurt because he had to kill him. Used the serrated knife on him too and listened to him scream. The hand was an afterthought,” Michael said. The more he spoke, the more confident he got. Everything he was saying lined up with the wounds on the bodies, but something felt off. Although Spencer didn’t want to admit it, Y/N had probably been right. He was protecting the woman he loved.

“How did you find them?” Spencer asked. Where did those names come from? There was no connection between the three victims other than their prolific use of social media. “There was no connection between them.”

“Yes, there was,” he said, leaning across the table to stare directly into Spencer’s eyes. “Arrogance. They sat on the opposite side of a computer screen and spewed hateful drivel that they thought would never come back to them.”

“Where exactly did you find them?”

Michael took a deep breath again and when he opened his eyes, there was a fire in them Spencer hadn’t noticed before. “Hopefully, a man such as yourself will find this equally disgusting. I found them all through a Twitter tag they were using. #itaintrape.”

—–

“What?” Emily exclaimed from outside the room, immediately taking out her phone to do a quick search of the tag. “Oh my god.”

The rest of the team came to crowd around Emily, looking at her phone at the disgusting comments made by people who would in all likelihood never be held accountable for their words. “This is disgusting.”

Though these men had been killed and the BAU had a job to do, everyone was having an increasingly difficult time feeling anything but contempt for the victims. 

—–

“I d-don’t use Twitter,” Spencer replied. He had no idea what any of that meant. “What’s a tag? They all used the same one?”

“You’re an analog man, aren’t you?” Michael laughed, feeling a little bit more confident in what he was doing. “A tag is a hashtag, the number sign, that allows people to type in something after it, like these disgusting men, and some women actually, that would allow others to search for the same topic. In this case, these disgusting excuses for men that were wiped from the earth, used the tag #itaintrape. Colin’s tweet was #itaintrape if she can’t say no. Robert’s was #itaintrape if she orgasms. And Jack’s…” he said, searching his brain for the right tweet, “his was #itaintrape if they’re not old enough to consent. Fucking disgusting. I found the most disgusting tags I could, tracked them down and killed them. I’m just mad I got found out so soon, I could’ve done more.”

Spencer wanted to throw up. The fact that something like this could exist, where people could go and talk about something like this, it made him physically sick. Michael had used incriminating language when it came to finding the victims. He was the one that found them, but he still got the feeling that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. The only thing he could think of that might get him to slip up was asking where the murders actually took place. “Where did you kill them?” 

“They were all killed in a warehouse outside of town. It’s caught up in legal issues so no one goes there.” As Spencer got up to leave, he said nothing, honestly just trying to keep his composure and keep from throwing up. When he exited the room, Hotch said he already sent officers to check out the warehouse, and that the cops that took bribes over Colin and Robert’s case were taken into custody. 

“What do you think?” he asked. 

It just didn’t sit well. Everything that Michael said indicated he was the responsible party, but the way he said it, that was evidence of something else. “If the warehouse checks out, we’re going to have a difficult time proving that anyone other than him committed these crimes.”

Everyone had come to the same conclusion. The evidence checked out. But the behavior said different. 

—–

The warehouse was the scene of the murders. All three victims’ blood was found there. “Well thank you for your help,” the leader officer said to Hotch and the team. “But everything checks out. We’re gonna take it from here.”

“We have reason to believe that Michael is covering for someone else,” he replied. “When we interviewed him, he refused to use words like ‘I’ and ‘me,’ he only spoke as if it were a story.”

“But everything checks out,” the officer said, his confusion evident as he looked at the rest of the team. “The murder scene. He said how the victims died and with what weapon. He said how he tracked them down.”

“We strongly believe that if you close down this investigation now, you’ll be letting a murderer go free,” Morgan said. “He used first person language when he was talking about hunting them down, so we believe that was his part in the murders.”

“But when it came to everything else, he told it like a story. Plus, when Dr. Reid here showed him the pictures, his first instinct was to look away. Our unsub wouldn’t do that. They’d have pride in what they did. Any vigilante would,” JJ said. Although she didn’t feel bad for the victims, she still did her job. These were the kinds of cases that made her question what she did for a living.

Once again, the officer extended his hand toward Hotch and the rest of the team, leaving off with a small wave from Reid. “I appreciate what you’re saying, but our hard evidence points to Michael Plasket. If someone else is out there, we’ll catch them, but for now, this case is closed.”

As they walked out of the station, feeling as if their work was unfinished, none of them really knew how to feel. Agents were supposed to feel bad when they couldn’t catch an unsub, but did they actually feel bad? Didn’t these victims get what they deserved?

—–

Nearly three hours outside town, Cara turned on the local news app on her phone to see her beloved Michael being taken into custody. She never thought she’d find love. Not after what happened to her. But Michael came into her life. Respected her decisions. Respected her body. And most importantly, gave her time. She loved him with all her heart. But these kinds of people needed to pay, and he knew that. That’s why he’d taken the fall for him. As the tears formed a wall over her eyes, she kissed the screen. “I’m sorry, Michael. I love you. Thank you.”

With his help, she would continue on.

—–

While everyone else went back to the Bureau to start on their paperwork for the case, Spencer headed over to Y/N’s office. He didn’t want to leave off on a fight. He walked in intending to apologize. But she said nothing as he walked in.

“We caught the guy,” he said unconvincingly. “Everything pointed him, but he was probably covering for someone.”

“So you didn’t catch the guy,” she replied, looking up with no emotion. “You think the person who actually killed them got away?” Spencer nodded. “Good.”

“Good?” he asked. 

“Yea,” she replied. “I’m a human being and I don’t feel bad that these men got what they deserved.”

“But even you said you thought it was a woman? You said that’s where the facts pointed. Isn’t that why you went into this field? So that you could help catch the culprits? With facts? You were right,” he said.

A small smile painted her delicate features. “I know I was,” she said. “After all, I am good at my job. I know I was right, but I hope she keeps going and taking revenge on people like Colin, Robert and Jack.”

Spencer’s mouth dropped open. There was a sick feeling in his stomach, but as he turned away, he wasn’t sure whether that sick feeling came from the fact that Y/N seemed to have no bad feelings for their uncaught unsub, or because he happened to agree with her and he hated himself for it.


	12. Chapter 12

When Spencer had gone to Y/N’s office the other day, he intended to go in and apologize. He said something he shouldn’t. He’d doubted her because of his hubris and he’d made an accusation. But upon hearing how she was glad the unsub got away, and feeling like he might have actually agreed with her, he didn’t know what to say and had just walked out. 

Now it was three days later, three laborious days filled with never-ending paperwork for this past case, and he still hadn’t spoken to Y/N. From his desk, he could see that Hotch was getting a call; they probably had a case. But before they left, he needed to hear her voice.

“Hey,” he said quietly so that no one else could hear. “It’s me.”

There was a momentary pause before she snapped back at him. “Yea, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Although, I am one.”

“Look, I’m really sorry, Y/N,” he started. “I didn’t mean what I said the other day. It came out the wrong way and I’m sorry.”

“I believe you,” she started. He felt a weight lift off his chest, that is, until she spoke again. “But just because you’re sorry doesn’t mean I’m not still hurt.” She said nothing else. What did that mean? Spencer couldn’t read women - like at all. Was she too hurt for them to continue seeing each other?

“What does that mean…for us?” he said, swallowing hard as Hotch waved him and the rest of the team toward the conference room.

She took a deep breath and he felt his heart jump. “I don’t want to break up, Spencer, but…I need time to process what I’m feeling right now. Okay?”

“Yea,” he replied. At least she didn’t want to completely break it off right now. When he glanced toward the conference room, the team waved him over again. He gave the motion he’d be there in once second and turned his attention back toward Y/N. “Look, we have a case, so I have to go, but I needed to say that I was sorry before I left. I’m really sorry. I like you too much for my pride to take over and keep from doing that.”

Spencer heard a slight chuckle on the other side of the line that gave him hope. “Well, it’s good to know that your giant ego wouldn’t stand in our way. That’s something I guess. Go save the world. We’ll talk later.”

As he hung up the phone and walked into the conference room, Spencer fielded questions about Y/N, basically saying nothing until they started talking about the case.

“My beautiful BAU adventurers, you are off to the absolute middle of nowhere. Bellemeade, Kentucky. Population less than 1,000,” Garcia started. “Where a 10-year-old boy, Deacon Fullerton was found strangled to death. His body was found covered in small cuts, barely deep enough to break skin, thank god for my eyes, and partially covered in leaves and grass in the woods behind a friend’s house.”

“Who’s the friend?” Reid asked, rifling through the papers she’d put in front of him. While everyone else had iPads to go over their information, Reid still preferred paper.

“Cash and Annabelle Hensley. Parents to Cash Junior, 11, Callie, 8 and Grace, 5. They look like your typical family before yours truly digs into their past. The kids are in a local grade school. Cash and Deacon were friends apparently - only one grade apart. The senior Cash works in a factory and the wife, Annabelle works as a kindergarten teacher, so the youngest daughter, Grace, is in her class.” 

People assumed that small town cases were easier. Less people, less interference. But the opposite was normally true. A town that small - less than 1,000 people, that normally meant that everyone knew everyone, or close to it, which in turn, meant that the townspeople tended to close ranks around one another to protect each other. And in the case of a child’s death, that was going to be exemplified. Pretty much anyone on the team would take a big city case, where no one knew anyone and therefore had no allegiance to one another, than a small town case any day.

“Well,” Rossi started, bringing up the picture of the boy’s body barely covered in debris. “By the looks of it, the hay and leaves on top of Deacon’s body are barely covering him. Now, that could be the work of scavengers moving the leaves around, which makes sense considering there are a few bite marks from animals on his arms and legs, but it could also be the work of a disorganized killer.”

“An organized one would’ve found a better way to dispose of the body,” Emily said as she looked down in grief at the young boy’s body. It was bad enough when they had to deal with adult men and women, but it always made more of an impact on the entire team when the victim was a child. No one deserved to lose their kid like that. Parents are meant to pass away before their children, not vice versa. “Considering the very shallow cuts on his body, I would think that leads more to a disorganized killer. A first-timer even.”

Being a technical analyst rather than a profiler, Garcia wasn’t sure how she came to that conclusion. “How do you know that?” she asked, not necessarily to Emily, but to anyone who might be able to answer the question. 

“We can’t know for sure,” Reid said; he happened to agree with Emily. “But a first time killer is normally nervous about what they’re doing. They hesitate. An experienced killer would’ve made deeper cuts. Putting that with the fact that he was so poorly covered, it makes sense that whoever killed him is new to the act of murder.”

The question was whether or not this was a one-time situation or the start of a killer’s journey. And honestly, it depended on circumstances. They needed more information. “Given the size of the town, you’re going to travel with us,” Hotch said to Garcia.

“Me, sir?” Though she did like to get out of the office on occasion, Garcia was always wary about going with them on cases. It normally meant really bad ones. She liked living in her bubble at the BAU. “Why? I mean not that I don’t love you, but why do you need me there?”

Considering how small the area was, it was likely that their wifi connection would be difficult to sustain from so far away, so it would be easier if she just came with them. “Also, Bellemeade has no medical examiner, so I’m going to call Y/N and ask if she would mind accompanying us on this trip,” he said as he looked in Spencer’s direction. Did he know everything? Could Hotch read everyone? All the time? Because he looked at Reid in such a way that he was convinced he knew they still weren’t completely on speaking terms yet. “As long as she’s able to accompany us, wheels up in three hours.”

Once Hotch had left the room to make the call, Morgan turned toward Reid. “You gonna be okay with this, kid? You’re girlfriend on a case with us when you aren’t exactly speaking?”

“I am a professional,” he said grouchily. “And I called to apologize this morning, so we aren’t great, but we are speaking.”

“You apologized?” JJ said quizzically.

“What? I can apologize when I’m wrong.”

“You wrong?” Rossi questioned with a smile. “Who knew the genius was ever wrong.”

God, he wished they were on complete speaking terms. It would be much easier fielding questions about their love life than acting like they were okay with each other when they weren’t yet. “Apparently, when it comes to women, I’m wrong a lot,” he said as he picked up his files and tapped them on the table before he left. “Hopefully, Y/N doesn’t have a problem coming. If they have no ME there, she would be very helpful. And maybe I can apologize profusely while we’re there. Grovel a little bit.”

Morgan chuckled. “I’d pay money to see that.”

“Ditto,” Emily said.

—–

As Y/N pulled her gloves on, ready to start the autopsy on an older man who had died of Parkinson’s disease, she saw a number pop up on her phone. It was a Bureau number, but it wasn’t Spencer’s. Maybe he was just calling from another number. Honestly, she was still pretty salty about what he’d said to her during the last case. He’d questioned her intelligence and her expertise. On top of that, he’d accused her of making a rash judgement based on her past experiences. But it wasn’t rash at all. It was based in fact; it just happened to have a little bit of emotion thrown in. Should she pick up the phone?

Oh, screw it.

“Hello, this is Y/N. How can I help you?”

Instead of hearing Spencer’s soft voice on the other side, she heard a gruffer one. It was Agent Hotchner. “Y/N, we have a case in Bellemeade, Kentucky and they don’t have their own ME. Would you be able to accompany us?”

That really wasn’t her forte. Like Garcia, she enjoyed her part in catching the bad guys. It was away from the action, if you will. He must’ve been able to feel her hesitation, because he added to the request. “A child has been killed. We wouldn’t normally ask, but the town is so small.” Heaving a sigh of resignation, she agreed, wondering whether or not she should sit next to Spencer on the plane. They’d probably be there for a couple of days, so should she room with him? Not rooming with him would probably make more of a scene and she didn’t feel like being the subject of office and profile-based gossip. 

“Thank you very much, Y/N,” he said. “You can meet us on the tarmac in about three hours.” Before he hung up, he added one more thing that she hadn’t expected. “Are you going to be okay with this?”

Of course Hotch knew something was up. “Yea, I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll see you in three hours.”

Great, she thought, informing her intern that she was about to do her first autopsy alone.

This was going to be interesting.


	13. Chapter 13

Spencer swallowed hard as he stepped onto the plane. Why did they have to be fighting right now? Why was he such an idiot when it came to women? As he turned the corner, he noticed that pretty much everyone was on board already with the exception of Morgan and Garcia. Y/N was there and “asleep” at the back - at least, she was feigning sleep. He could tell she was still awake. This was probably her ill-conceived way of avoiding conversation and awkward silences for now. 

“Ready to go, my pretties,” Garcia exclaimed as she walked onto the jet with Morgan following closely behind - her bags in tow.

“Babygirl, what in the world do you pack in these things?” he asked, stumbling aboard and dropping her two duffel bags. “If I didn’t know you angel, I’d say it was a dead body.”

“Women have to prepare for every possible situation when they travel,” she said matter-of-factly. “Isn’t that right, ladies?”

All but Y/N answered absolutely yes. Although Spencer could see her eyebrows raise as she “slept.” Hotch decided to let everyone rest a bit while the jet took off; cases had been non-stop as of late, which meant that everyone on the team was getting sporadic sleep at best.

“Alright, everyone,” Hotch said after about 45 minutes in the air. “Let’s go over victimology.” Although she wasn’t a profiler, Y/N magically “woke up” and joined the group. “We have one boy, Deacon Fullerton, found dead in the woods from apparent strangulation, with minor cuts, and barely covered in leaves and hay from nearby.”

Spencer looked through the pictures of the crime scene and saw Y/N flinch. Granted, she worked with dead bodies directly, even more so than he did, but actually seeing them at the scene of the crime apparently knocked her for a loop. “There seems to be no sign of sexual assault,” he said, motioning back toward his girlfriend (Was she still his girlfriend? Not now, he thought to himself). ”Although you’ll figure that out for sure when we get there. If that’s the case though, it’s rare for a child victim. There’s normally some type of sexual motivation.”

“If there’s no sexual motivation, then what is the significance of targeting young boys?” Y/N asked the group. 

“Could be a stand-in for someone that tortured him in his youth,” JJ said.

Emily spun around from where she was sitting to interject and caught sight of Y/N, taut with frustration. Something was definitely going on there. “We’re not even sure about that yet. What if this is truly a one-time offender?”

“Then we need to look close to home,” Morgan said sadly, knowing all too well that these kinds of cases were central to the family. The papers fell to his lap as they thought about what this boy went through. Y/N had been standing behind and between Morgan and Spencer, so when Morgan let the crime scene photos fall into his lap, she noticed something.

“Can I see those?” she asked Morgan. 

“What do you see?” Rossi asked, noting her look of consternation. “Something wrong?”

She scoffed. “Well besides the inherent wrongness of this entire thing, I had a theory based on what I can see of the strangulation marks.”

“What’s significant about them?” Spencer asked.

Putting whatever difference they had to the side, Y/N reached over Spencer and pointed toward the brushing on the boy’s neck. “I can’t be 100 percent positive until I take measurements, but based on what I see, Deacon was killed by a child.”

“What?” Garcia asked, stunned out of her technical reverie and into the present moment. “You think this boy was killed by another child?”

The strangulation marks were pretty indicative of that. “They are very small. Don’t even reach fully across the neck. On top of that, they move around, as though the killer couldn’t get a good enough grasp and had to go back to try more than once.”

“Oh my god,” JJ replied. As a mother herself, it must’ve been difficult to imagine one child killing another; they were supposed to be pure. When they weren’t? That didn’t sit well.

For a few moments, everyone sat in silence, trying to digest what Y/N had just said - and that she was probably right even without having autopsied the victim yet. “When we touch down, Y/N, you’re going to head to the local family doctor.”

“What?” she laughed. “The town is so small they do autopsies there?”

Hotch shrugged, a smile creeping into the corner of his mouth. “Apparently yes. They have a downstairs area that the doctor uses whenever an autopsy is needed.”

“Oh dear lord,” she replied with a sigh. This was going to be really interesting.

Hotch continued as Y/N tried to deal with the fact that she was supposed to conduct on autopsy on a murder victim in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. “Garcia, you and Rossi are going to head to the station and hook up your system. After your done Dave, you can meet me behind the Hensley’s house where the body was found. We’ll go over the crime scene, while Morgan and Emily, you interview Cash and Annabelle and their kids if they’ll allow it, and Reid, you and JJ can interview Deacon’s parents, Austin and Charlotte.” As he closed the file, he sat back, an unsettling feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. “I have a feeling this case is going to be more complicated than meets the eye.”

—–

When they touched down, Y/N had one of the local officers drive her to the doctor’s office where she would conduct the autopsy. Upon looking at little Deacon, she could tell her assumptions were right. Deacon was killed by another child, and the cuts had pooled next to no blood, meaning they were inflicted after death. She would look through the debris and conduct the autopsy as she was supposed to and hopefully she’d find something else useful. But it wasn’t looking good. Picking up the phone, she called Spencer, to let him know about the cuts on Deacon’s body. “Hello,” he said, “hello.” He was having a hard time hearing. The wifi in this area sucked. 

“It’s me, Spence. Without even autopsying him yet, I can tell you that your killer is definitely a child and the cuts were made after death. Now, I’m no profiler,” she said snarkily, “but given that it’s definitely a kid, the cuts being made after death would most likely mean that your killer is more prone to things like this in the future, right?”

“Yea,” he said, noting the sarcasm in her voice. He really hoped they could get through this. “Look, Y/N…”

“Later, Spence, okay?” She didn’t want to do this right now. Not over the phone. Considering how small the town was, they’d undoubtedly be rooming together tonight. They could talk then.

As he said goodbye and hung up the phone, he relayed the information to the rest of the team. “She’s right,” Hotch said. “This may have been the first time, but if we don’t stop them, it probably won’t be the last.”

—–

“Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton?” Reid asked as he and JJ knocked on the door. “My name is Doctor Spencer Reid, this is Agent Jennifer Jareau. We’re here to talk to you about your son.”

Charlotte’s face was reddened, her eyes puffy from crying. Spencer couldn’t count the amount of victims families that had that same look in their eyes. Like the world was over. That’s how she looked. Charlotte was completely devoid of hope and Austin seemed to be in a state of pure shock, looking back and forth unable to focus on anything in particular. “Come in,” he said softly. “Take a seat.”

When they entered the home, JJ first took notice of a picture that used to be on the wall, now shattered on the floor. There were also quite a few vases and dishes that were broken. The other thing she noticed was a picture frame above the fireplace - on one side was a picture of Deacon and the other was nothing, nothing but a small pink baby sock with the name Savannah written underneath it; they’d experience a miscarriage, pretty far along from what it seemed, and now their other baby had been taken away.

“Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton,” JJ said softly. “Tell us about your son. His daily life. What did he like to do? Who did he like to hang out with?”

“He was just like any other boy,” Austin cracked, grabbing his wife’s hand as she sobbed into his shoulder. “Every morning, we’d make him breakfast…”

“He always wanted pancakes,” his mother interjected, a quiver beginning in her lips. “After pancakes, or cereal if I didn’t have the time, one of us would drive him to school.”

“Once school was over,” Austin said, “We’d pick him up and after dinner and homework, normally around five or six o’clock depending on the day, he would get together with friends. A boy named Joseph. Joseph Parker, and occasionally Cash Jr. next door.”

“Then he’d go to sleep and do it all over again,” his mother sobbed, clutching her chest as she cried. “It was just like any other day. What happened to my baby?”

Neither agent could imagine what these parents were going through. They didn’t want to reveal just yet that their baby was taken away by someone else. They needed an answer of some kind before telling them that. “Just one more question,” Spencer said, “Was there anything Deacon said or did lately that was out of the normal? Was he pulling away from anyone?”

“He just seemed more withdrawn in general,” his father said, standing up and pulling a picture off the shelf. “He’s only 10, but he is…was growing up faster than his friends.” As he continued, his voice croaked, unable to comprehend that his little boy was gone from this world. “We just attributed it to growing up, puberty, you know? But he was pulling away from Joseph and Cash. Said they were both being mean.”

Both JJ and Spencer stood up from the couch and shook the parents’ hands. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch,” Spencer said.

“We’re going to find out who did this,” JJ declared. “I promise.”

Spencer gave JJ a side eye as they left the house. “You sure you should have promised something like that?”

“Spence, they lost their child. Their second one - the first before she was even born,” she said with tears in her eyes. “We have to find out who did this and why.”

“I’m afraid we may not have the answer to why even if we do find who did it,” he responded. He felt in his pocket for the phone, having felt it buzz while they were inside the house. It was a text from Y/N.

“What is it?” JJ asked, turning toward him as he stared down at the text in shock and disgust. 

“She said she found a piece of tan material stuffed down Deacon’s throat. Placed there after he died.”

They both took a deep breath and closed their eyes, attempting to process the information. Whoever did this was deeply disturbed.

—–

As he looked out the window, he wondered if Deacon’s body was still there. Maybe he’d check tomorrow. See if any of the animals had gotten to it. He could bring his pocketknife again. He thought about how Deacon’s skin had opened under the knife. It looked cool. He wondered if it would look any different now that it had been a couple days, but he was pulled out of his daydream when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Same as they did every night. He was hear again. Hiding under the covers, he stilled himself. It’ll all be over soon.


	14. Chapter 14

“So what do you notice, Dave?” Hotch asked as Rossi walked toward the crime scene after helping Penelope set up her technical stronghold down at the local police station. The two senior profilers knew immediately that something was off, or rather that there was yet another piece of evidence that pointed to their killer being a child. 

Deacon’s body had been found under leaves and hay. “There are leaves nearby, but the hay came from somewhere else. Whoever did this brought it over to cover the body because they couldn’t gather enough leaves.”

“Exactly,” he said, his eyes suddenly drawn to a branch nearby. “What do we have here?” 

Rossi walked over behind him, an evidence bag in hand to gather whatever it was that Hotch saw. “Is that a piece of material?” he asked, looking at the swath of semi-rough tan material.

Hotch nodded, placing the material into the bag to send off to Y/N at her makeshift ME’s office. “A piece of pants, maybe?” Other than the piece of unknown material and the fact that hay was brought from somewhere else to cover the body, there wasn’t much to be found at the crime scene that gave them any new information. Everything they found just pointed to the killer being a child - inexperienced and impulsive.

“We should go assist Morgan and Prentiss with those interviews,” Rossi said, zipping up the evidence bag and labeling it as they walked back to the house. “Maybe we can interview the kids while they interview the parents.”

—–

“Babygirl,” Morgan whispered into the phone. “Have you been able to find anything about Cash and Annabelle that might help us?”

Despite the case they were working on, he found himself chuckling as he heard Garcia huffing and puffing in the background, undoubtedly do to the lack of wifi in the area. “The service out here sucks!” she exclaimed, apologizing to a local officer who happened to be passing her desk. “But don’t worry, yours truly has been able to glean some information about them in between rebooting the system. For the third time in the past two hours, mind you. God, I need my high-speed internet.”

“Garcia,” Emily warned. “Do you have anything?”

“Yes, my love. I can tell you from memory, sorry, still waiting for the system to boot up again, that Annabelle has been to the hospital outside the city on numerous occasions, upward of 10 in the past year, for quote unquote “accidents.” She’s claimed falling down the stairs, burning herself on the stove, and the like, but every time she goes in, her husband is right there standing over her. And according to some of the nurses, her husband tends to speak for her.”

“Thanks, mama,” Morgan said. “That helps. Talk to you later.”

“Go get ‘em, baby boy.”

“Alright,” Emily said, as Morgan hung up the phone. “Let’s go see if we can get something out of Cash Senior and Annabelle.”

“We’re gonna take the kids,” Hotch said. After walking forever back to the house, they’d finally made it. “We’ll interview them. You take the parents.”

They were going to need to interview the family of the other boy, Joseph Parker, as well as Joseph himself just to rule him out. But as soon as Annabelle opened the door, they could tell something was very wrong inside these four walls. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Hensley. My name is Derek Morgan, these are Agents Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner and David Rossi. We’re here to talk to you about Deacon Fullerton. He and your son were friends?”

“Yes, they played together on occasion,” Annabelle said, refusing to make eye contact as she opened the door and let team in.

“If it’s okay with you, Agent Hotchner and I would like to interview your children as well,” Rossi said, addressing his intentions to the wife in an attempt to prove his point. 

“You can’t interview a minor without their parents present,” the senior Cash said emphatically. 

“Unless we have your consent,” Hotch replied - his eyes peering into the father’s through half-lidded eyes. 

“Well, you don’t. You can take a look in their rooms if you want, but you talk to them with us,” he replied.

With a quick nod of their heads, Hotch and Rossi turned toward the staircase to the children’s rooms. They were all thinking the same thing. It was even a hard situation to profile. Whether or not the killer lived in this house, there was definitely abuse going on in this house. “Okay, please, take a seat, Mr. and Mrs. Hensley,” Emily said, making note of all three children sitting at the kitchen table in absolute silence. “How close were Deacon and your son?”

Annabelle made an attempt to speak, but her husband placed his hand on her leg and spoke over her. “They played together on occasion, like my wife said earlier, but he played with that Parker boy more.” Immediately placing blame, Emily thought to herself - convenient. 

“You’re friends with the Fullerton’s, right?” Morgan said, watching as they both nodded. As he asked the next question, he made a slight motion for Emily to look toward the children. She noticed that Cash Junior was looking in at the conversation more than the girls were. “Well, they said that Deacon had been withdrawn lately. Said he didn’t want to play with Joseph or Cash, that they were being mean to him lately.”

“That’s just boys being boys,” Senior said in such a way that made Emily’s skin want to crawl. That was such bullshit. Excuses and nothing more. 

“Have any of your children been more withdrawn as of late?” Emily asked. The look in Annabelle’s eyes immediately said yes, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t speak. She was definitely under her husband’s thumb. Even if the killer wasn’t here, they had to find a way to get the senior Hensley out of the house.

“Not at all,” Mr. Hensley said, pointing his thumb back toward the kitchen. “All of my kids are great. Especially my boy. He’s going to turn out to be a fine young man just like his daddy.”

Again, Morgan and Emily glanced to the kitchen. The girls were coloring away, pretending as if nothing was happening, but Cash Junior was listening intently. He’d stopped coloring long ago, his eyes too filled with anger to continue. One of the crayons was even crushed next to him, as if he had gripped it too hard. 

“Do you mind if we interview each of the kids?” Morgan asked. “One by one? You can be right here. They can even sit with you if you want.” Even if they couldn’t ask the questions they wanted to, they could gauge their facial expressions. Behavior was so much more telling than words.

“Gracie,” the father yelled, loudly enough for every member of the family to jump. “Come in here and sit with your mama.”

With a teddy bear in hand, and a picture for her mother, Grace came to sit in her mother’s lap. Although the little girl hadn’t shown Emily or Morgan the picture, she could see through it somewhat. There were four figures instead of five - three small and one large - maybe the mother and three children? It would make sense given the tension in the household. “Hi Grace,” Emily said softly. “I’m gonna ask you a few questions about Deacon, okay?” 

The little girl with hair so light it was almost white, nodded her head, a tiny smile forming on her face as she sat in her mother’s lap. Both girls knew of Deacon, but they claimed to never have played with him. They said Cash Jr. wouldn’t let them. When Callie came over, Morgan noticed a small fading bruise on her leg just under her skirt; it was probably not meant to be seen. Finally, they asked for Cash Junior to come over. “Come here Junior,” the father called, the tone in his voice more full of pride than it had been with his daughters.

While the girls came to sit in their mother’s lap, Junior wanted nothing to do with either parent, going to sit in an armchair by himself across from Emily. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with Morgan. Emily seemed to be the only one he wanted to talk to. “So Cash,” Emily started. “You were friends with Deacon?” For the first time since they’d walked in the door, a small smile crossed the boy’s lips. He nodded, the twinkle in his eye immediately vanishing. “Deacon said you were being mean to him. Were you? Did something happen between you?” 

“No,” he said. “He was just being a baby and I didn’t want to hang out with him anymore.”

Although they both wanted to, they couldn’t ask any questions about their home life without alerting the father to the fact that they were onto him. And that wasn’t what they were here for. “When was the last time you played with Deacon?” 

“Last week some time,” he replied, his finger fidgeting in his lap. He was lying. The mother seemed to betray that too, but again, the father was stoic. They knew something about this boy they weren’t saying, but they would require a second interview, at the station, to figure out exactly what happened. 

“Okay,” Morgan said after Emily was finished, “We’re probably going to need you to come to the station at some point. But we’re finished for now.” The timing could not have been better. Hotch and Rossi came down the stairs and all four exited the house with the same bad feeling - like they were leaving a violent abuser in the house - and it didn’t sit well with anyone. 

“Find anything upstairs?” Emily asked. 

The girls’ rooms were basically uneventful, but Cash Junior’s room turned up a bit more. “He had a pair of khaki pants that looks like it could match the material we found out in the woods, but the pants were ripped. On top of that, there were quite a few pictures of the family under his bed with the mother’s and father’s eyes scratched out,” Hotch said.

“We need to get this material over to Y/N and see if she can identify it for us,” Rossi said. “And we need to figure this out quickly because something awful is going on in there.”

—–

After dropping the piece of tan material off to Y/N, Hotch, Rossi, Morgan and Prentiss met up with JJ and Spencer at the station. “Find anything out from Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton?” Morgan asked.

“Just that these parents have been through more than any parent should have to go through,” JJ said sadly. 

Spencer imagined the frame with the baby sock inside. “They had a miscarriage and now their only other child was taken from them. We only know that they had nothing to do with this, but we knew that before.”

After obtaining the warrants they needed, it was nearly 10 o’clock at night. They weren’t going to be able to do anything else tonight. Y/N walked into the station, having been driven over from the doctor’s office. “Anything?” Hotch asked. 

“I can tell you that the material I found in Deacon’s throat and the piece you gave me come from the same thing. I’ll know what it is by tomorrow,” she said, attempting to wipe the sleep out of her eyes and failing. “Need sleep.” She stretched her arms up to the ceiling, an ungodly noise escaping her mouth. “So tired.”

“There’s only one motel in town, so we’re going to have to double up.” Garcia called Morgan, Hotch and Rossi would always double up when necessary, JJ and Emily called each other, which left Y/N and Spencer to awkwardly double up.

Wonderful. 

“Let’s all go get some sleep,” Hotch said. “The sooner we figure this out, the better.”

As they hopped into two separate cars, Y/N fell asleep on Spencer’s shoulder; it was probably just because she was tired, but the gesture gave him hope that maybe she wasn’t mad at him anymore.


	15. Chapter 15

“Wake up,” Spencer whispered as they approached the motel where they’d be staying for the night. She was out like a light. “Y/N, wake up.”

Groaning, she stretched her arms out, practically punching him in the jaw as she woke up. “I don’t wanna move,” she whined. “Carry me.”

“I thought you were mad at me,” he chuckled as he unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car. He attempted to reach out for her to pick her up, but she moved herself, so he caught her as she toppled out of the car with her eyes closed. 

“I am, ish, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to carry me,” she yawned. She leaned against him as they walked inside and got checked in. Normally, check-in wouldn’t be allowed so late at night, but they made exceptions because they were from the Bureau. Y/N said nothing, practically snoring as Spencer checked them into their room. He grabbed the key and gathered her to him as they walked down the hallway. Just as they got to the room, Y/N finally opened her eyes. “I think I’m getting a second wind…fuck,” she breathed. 

Spencer didn’t want to say yay, but it’s definitely what he was thinking. He’d been wanting to apologize again and talk out what was bothering her, because he thought it went deeper than his slip-up, but they hadn’t had the time. Work had been non-stop. Maybe now that she was awake and they were forced to be in the same room together, they could take about the entity that was them. He wanted them to stay that way. 

Y/N got changed first, coming out in a tank top and shorts and sat on the bed while Spencer went to go get changed. “I’m so awake now,” she said, frustrated that she couldn’t go to sleep. “I wanna be tired.” She was whining. She was that kind of overtired where you weren’t tired anymore; it made absolutely no sense. 

“Well…” he started, a small smile tinging the corners of his lips, “now that you’re awake, maybe we can talk about the other day?”

“I don’t wanna,” she said, crossing her hands over her chest and pouting. She couldn’t keep from laughing at her immaturity; she was truly exhausted.

As he came to sit down on the bed, he placed his hand on her knee and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m really sorry about what I said the other day. I shouldn’t have doubted you. I had no reason to, except for my hubris.”

“You are an obnoxious pain in the ass,” she snorted, leaning her head against his shoulder, “but I do believe you’re sorry.”

He hesitated. There was something else wrong, but he was pretty sure he was going to have to pry to get her to say what she needed to say. “Is there something else?” he asked timidly. “I feel like something else is bothering you. I know that what I said was stupid, but it felt like the outburst was a little disproportionate to what I said…”

She took a deep breath, pushing off of his shoulder and looking him in the eyes. “You might be onto something…” she said. But again, she hesitated. “My intelligence was always something that was questioned by the men in my life. My mother was always very supportive, but my father…”

“I thought your father left when you were young,” he said confused.

He had. Before she was five. “He came back every now and then to make it seem like he actually gave a shit about me. Apparently, giving my mom some cash, never enough mind you, to raise me, and showing himself were enough to qualify him as a father in his own mind. But as I grew up, I started to look more and more like my mom, so while I was studying and devouring book after book, he claimed that with looks like my mother’s I should go out and ‘find a good man.’ Claimed that I’d never make it as a doctor, which was what I wanted to be at the time.”

“He’s an ass,” Spencer said emphatically, thankful to have brought a smile to her face. “Your father is an idiot and I hope I never meet him because I will tear his self-esteem to shreds.”

“But he’s still my father,” she said sadly. “And it still hurt.” She tore her gaze away from his and started twiddling her thumbs. There was still something else. He knew the signs. “There was someone else…”

“Who did what? Mocked your intelligence?” A tear came to her eye as she nodded. “Who?”

“My abuser.”

Wait a minute. “You knew your abuser?”

“Yea,” she cracked. “I trusted him…he was my organic chemistry professor.”

“Where is he now?” Spencer asked, hoping he was either dead or in prison.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. “I assume he’s still teaching. After I ran out of the classroom that day, I never turned back. I never saw him again.”

“You didn’t report him?” he asked incredulously. “Why?”

Why did most women not report sexual assaults. One, they were too scared. or two, no one ever believed them. In her case, it was number two. “He’d had multiple claims of ‘misconduct’ before and nothing was ever done. He’s an esteemed researcher and beloved professor at the college, so the powers that be never did anything. And I vowed as I ran out of the classroom that I would never see his face again, so I let it go and pushed it into the back of my mind.”

He swallowed hard as he realized the impact of what he said. When she turned to him, her tears had fallen from their place up against her eyes and onto her cheeks. “I didn’t ever see him again. But I trusted him. I struggled in organic chem. I got an A- but I had to bust my ass for it. Anyway, he asked me if I would stay after class because he could see how hard I had worked. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“That’s when it happened?” he asked, grasping her hand in his own and giving it a tight squeeze. “That’s when he assaulted you?”

“Not at first,” she said, her lip quivering as she continued. He hated seeing her in pain. If he ever saw the man that did this to her, he’d rip his throat out. “At first, he just said that he was proud of me for trying so hard when the subject was so hard for me. I could’ve transferred to another professor, but I stuck it out. Apparently while he was talking, he had walked around in such a way that I was backed into the wall. He inched closer and closer to me until he was right up against me.” 

Her voice caught in her throat, but Spencer knew she needed to get the whole story out, so he just pulled her into him. He doubted she’d spoken about it to many people. “He started to slide his hand under my skirt, saying that my goals were too high. If I was struggling in organic chem, I would never make it in my chosen profession. But that didn’t matter to him. If I would just be his, he’d take care of me and nothing else would matter. He slipped his hand into my underwear, which was when I pushed him away, slapped him across the face and ran out of the room. It was my last class with him and it was the end of the semester, so in order to get away from him, I finished my last year before med school at another school. So…between him and my father telling me that I would never make it doing what I wanted to do, it’s really hard for me to not take comments about my intelligence to heart. I spent a lifetime doing it.” A sob raked its way through her body after she finished and she collapsed into his lap.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry,” he said as he rubbed her back. “I had no idea. If you want to show me a picture of him, I’ll keep an eye out and kill him for you.” She laughed into his lap before coming up to look at him again.

“I wouldn’t want you to go to jail for him,” she said, giving him a kiss on the lips. “I think what you said was dumb, but I also think I overreacted a bit. It’s just hard for me to believe in myself, you know?”

“Even after making it as one of the best medical examiners in the DC area?” he asked, touting her accomplishments. She wasn’t in the mood to do it herself right now, so he would do it for her. “Just so you know, you’ve proved everyone wrong.” As a smile crossed her tired features, he asked one final question about that day and would never speak of it again. “Have you ever told anyone?”

“About what he did to me? No, not really. I told my mother that he made a move on me, but she took that to mean hit on me and I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise. And I never told anyone else.”

“I’m glad you told me,” he replied. “So does this mean we don’t have to break up? You’re not mad at me anymore?” Again, she laughed at his hopeful, boyish look and nodded her head.

“I don’t wanna break up. And no, I’m not mad at you anymore,” she yawned, stretching her arms above her head. “If I wasn’t so tired, I could totally go for some make-up sex right now, but I’m exhausted.”

Leaning back into his pillow, Spencer took a deep breath, thankful that they’d gotten everything out in the open. “We can worry about that when we get back to DC,” he replied. 

“For now,” she said, ripping her tank top over her head, leaving her bare-chested, “I’ll sleep half naked. That’ll have to do.”

“It’s more than enough,” he laughed, loving the feel of her skin against his. “Goodnight, Y/N,” he said as he rubbed her back.

“Goodnight, Spence.”

—-

After six hours of sleep, which was not nearly enough, the team plus Y/N returned to the doctor’s office and the local station to continue the case. Thankfully, Y/N felt better than she had in a couple of days, undoubtedly because she had finally told someone what happened to her all those years ago. Overnight, she had a test running to figure out where the material from Deacon’s throat and near his body came from, so when she walked in the next morning, she had her answer. 

“Y/N,” Hotch questioned as he answered the phone. “Do you have something for us?” They were waiting for the local cops to bring in the Hensley family so everyone could be interrogated separately, while Morgan went to interview Joseph Parker and his family. 

“That I do,” she said. “The material you found at the crime scene and the piece of material shoved down Deacon’s throat both came from a tan Boy Scout uniform.”

“Thanks, Y/N,” he replied, disconnecting her from the line. “Reid, while we’re doing the interrogations of the Hensley family, I want you to go back to their home and look for a uniform. I’ll text Morgan to do the same at the Parker’s home before he leaves.”

As Reid got up to leave, he had a bad feeling that this case was going to get worse before it got better. “Oh and Reid,” Hotch said, before Spencer had a chance to leave the room, “Text Y/N and let her know that we may need her help for something not related to medicine. I have a theory.”


	16. Chapter 16

Reid had a theory too. As he made his way out of the station with an escort from the local police force, he picked up the phone and attempted to call Y/N. It took three tries before the call wasn’t dropped. That was another downside of small town cases, not only did small towns band together to keep out outsiders, the cell reception sucked. The second a connection was made was the second it was dropped. But finally, he got through. “Hey Y/N,” he greeted, a little more happily than he probably should have considering where he was headed. He couldn’t help it. After last night’s talk, Spencer felt like he and Y/N had smoothed things out. She knew of his past and now he knew hers.

“Hey, Spence,” she replied, walking around the doctor’s office not knowing what to do. They had the match on the material and once they found a uniform she could make an educated guess as to whether or not the pieces she had in her possession matched whatever uniform they found, but for right now, there was nothing knew she could add to help out the team. She hated feeling useless. “I don’t have anything new for you yet. Once someone finds a uniform, I can probably match the pieces to it, but otherwise I’ve got nothing.”

“I know,” he sighed as he got into the passenger’s side of the police car. “I’m on my way to the Hensley’s house now, while they’re brought in to the station for questioning, and Morgan is off interviewing the Parker’s. He’ll look for a uniform over there, and I’m it over here. I just wanted to let you know that as soon as you make a match with the uniforms, head over to the station. Hotch said he has a theory and we might need your help with something not related to medicine.”

“B-But I’m the medical lady,” she stammered. She had her area of expertise; doing something outside of medicine was daunting. “I’m best in my lab away from people.”

Spencer didn’t think so. She was much more competent with people than she gave herself credit for. Y/N was convinced she could only communicate effectively with the dead, but she was great at reading people. If she wanted to, she could be a great profiler; Spencer was convinced of that. “I have an idea what Hotch might want you there for, but I don’t want to speculate. You’ll be fine though.”

“So you have faith in me?” she asked sweetly, her voice a little shaky with emotion.

“I do. I have since the moment we started working together,” he replied. The officer that was driving him to the Hensley’s home hadn’t hit any traffic, as if anyone would in the middle of nowhere, so while Spencer was talking they had already made it there. Another two patrol cars passed them on the way, presumably the Hensley’s on their way to the station. “It’s just that you were so confident in your abilities that I thought you were obnoxious. But apparently people think the same thing about me, so I guess we belong together,” he laughed. 

“I think we might just,” she replied softly. “You and Morgan send over the uniforms as soon as you can and then I’ll make my way over to the station.” Just as he was about to say goodbye, Y/N spoke again, as if she wasn’t actually finished, just figuring out what to say. “And Spence…thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll see you later okay?”

“Yea, bye babe.”

As Spencer finished up the conversation, he hung up the phone and headed into the house. Considering there were only a few places the uniform would logically be, he headed toward the laundry room, which was located in a small closet-like area near the kitchen. He rifled through the clothing, finding only the parents clothes and very small children’s clothes, undoubtedly the youngest daughter Grace’s clothes. “Nothing?” the officer asked as Reid left the laundry room.

Reid nodded his head and walked up the stairs to Cash Junior’s room. If his theory (and possibly Hotch’s theory) were correct, the uniform was probably not in plain sight. If Cash was their killer, he seemed too smart to keep it out in the open. According to the report cards on the refrigerator, he was an exceptional student; he probably needed a more excelled program that this area couldn’t give him. 

When Reid entered the room, it looked like any other normal preteen boy’s room. His room had been papered in posters of the planets and lined with books by Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, but Cash had pictures of his favorite superheroes and video game characters. Batman seemed to be his favorite. As he searched through the closet, he found a couple pairs of pants that matched the color, but neither had a tear in them, and plus, they knew they were looking for a Boy Scout uniform. It wasn’t in the closet and it wasn’t in any of the drawers either. 

The wood floors creaked underneath Reid’s feet, so he stepped carefully, trying to perceive a difference that might indicate a loose floorboard. But there was nothing. He needed to find a hiding spot. That’s when he noticed it. There was a vent underneath the big Batman poster in his bedroom. One of the screws was missing and another was loose.

As he knelt to the floor and twisted the loose screw, the officer that drove him, Officer Perry he thought his name was, came up the stairs to see if he had found anything. “I’ve got something,” Reid said, reaching into the vent and pulling something out. But it wasn’t the uniform, it was a doll. A Ken doll; his eyes had been stabbed out and the genital area was drawn over in black marker. His theory was correct. Reaching in again, he felt around the vent for the uniform. It was there. 

Officer Perry knew the family, pretty well actually, but from the look on his face, Reid could see that he had no idea what had been going on inside this place. When the officer saw the doll, Reid was pretty sure he was going to be sick. “I-I never…knew. If I h-had, I would’ve…”

Reid stood up from the floor and placed the doll and the uniform in evidence bags. “A lot of people that do this kind of thing have a way of making people around them believe they are something they aren’t,” he said, placing his hand on the stunned officer’s shoulder. “There was very little chance you could’ve known. You’d have to know the signs.”

Pulling out his phone, he texted Morgan to tell him that he’d found a uniform and a doll. In all likelihood, even if Joseph Parker had a uniform with a tear in it, he wasn’t the one there were looking for. Then he texted Y/N and said he’d bring over the evidence himself that way they could drive back to the station together. Reid was pretty sure that they were going to need Y/N now that his suspicions had been confirmed. As they left the house, he asked Officer Perry if he’d drive him to the doctor’s office where Y/N was working and vowed to himself that the BAU wouldn’t be leaving until they could ensure that Cash Senior was never allowed near his family again.

—–

While Reid and Morgan were off collecting the boys’ uniforms, the rest of the BAU started conducting their interrogations. Like Y/N, Garcia didn’t have much to do at this point, so she stood outside the glass watching each interview in horror until she couldn’t take it anymore. The girls didn’t say too much, except that their daddy was mean to their mommy. Cash Senior refused to say anything. Apparently, he was pretty sure he had enough influence in the department, friends and people that owed him favors, that as long as he said nothing he’d be able to get out of here.

“Hey mama,” Morgan said, as he, Reid and Y/N arrived back at the station at the same time. She had stepped outside for some air after watching the father’s interrogation. “You okay, babygirl?”

“No!” she cried, hot tears rolling down her cheeks. “That man is abusing is family and he thinks he can get away with it.” 

“Don’t worry, Garcia,” Reid said as Morgan enveloped her in a hug. “I promise we are not leaving until that man can’t go near his family again.”

All four made their way back inside where JJ was interrogating the mother. Cash Junior had refused to talk to anyone. He was too scared. Hotch turned around as they walked in. “Anything on the uniforms, Y/N?” he asked.

“Without running extensive tests that I am unable to run on these machines, I can say with some certainty that the pieces of uniform I have match Cash Junior’s uniform,” she said, taking the bag with the doll in it and showing it to Hotch. “Spence also found this.”

With a sigh, Hotch took the bag and turned back toward the window where JJ was trying to get the mother to open up.

“Mrs. Hensley,” JJ said softly. “I promise you, that if your husband is hurting you, we can protect you, and your children.” Gently, she placed her hand on top of the scared mother’s in a gesture of reassurance. “I can see you’re scared, but we can protect you.”

“You don’t know him,” she shook. She brought her hand up to her head and entangled her fingers in her hair. She looked so tired. “You don’t know the connections he has.”

“His connections can’t do anything with hard evidence,” JJ replied. “Tell me.”

For the first time during the 20-minute long interview, Annabelle looked directly at JJ, searching her eyes for truth and hope. “He hits me…” she started. “Every day. It doesn’t matter what I do. He rarely touches the girls, but Cash tries to protect me, so his father goes after him too. You have to help us!” She started sobbing, her head falling into the table as she cried. JJ looked back with a knowing glance toward the rest of the team.

“That’s why we needed you here, Y/N,” Hotch said, turning from the glass toward where she was standing behind them. “Cash Junior knows of his father’s connections and friends. He doesn’t trust anyone with a badge. We normally don’t do this, but I think he’ll open up to you. The closest he got to opening up was with JJ, but as soon as he saw her badge, he closed up.”

“You want me to interview him?” she asked incredulously. “Hotch, I deal with dead people not live victims. What am I supposed to say to him?” In a panic, she turned toward Spencer with wide eyes. They needed her help, but this wasn’t her job.

“Just see if you can get him talking,” Spencer said, grabbing her gently by the arms to steady her. “If you can even get him to say more than a couple of sentences you can probably get him to open up.” 

“Okay,” she breathed. “Tell me about his room, where you found the doll. Anything that might help me.”

Hotch nodded as Spencer brought her to the corner of the room where he could tell her what she needed to know. Under his breath, he said quietly, “On some level, you can empathize with what he’s been through. Let him know you know how he feels. The team doesn’t have to know that it’s actually true though if you don’t want them to. Just make him feel like he’s not alone and he’ll open up. I know it.”

“Oh this is going to suck,” she said, taking a few deep breaths. With his hands gently holding either side of her face, Spencer pressed a small chaste kiss to her lips to the surprise of his friends. He normally didn’t do that kind of thing in front of people.

“You can do this.”

As she walked over to the door to the interrogation room, she shook about wildly, trying to shake out all the nervousness before she headed inside. “Wish me luck.”


	17. Chapter 17

As Y/N walked into the room, she steadied her breathing and tried to take note of anything about the young boy that might help her during the interview. This was the boy that killed Deacon, there really wasn’t any doubt about that, but there was something that drove him to do what he did - something she and the members of the BAU desperately wanted to stop. Judging by the doll, he hated his father - and they shared the same name - but he did like Batman. A lot apparently. He was wearing a Batman t-shirt today. 

“Hey, Batman,” she said softly. When she’d walked into the room, he’d been straight-faced and scared, but she did notice a small smirk form at the corner of his mouth. “My name is Y/N.”

From across the table, he looked up, searching her frame, presumably for a badge. “I’m not a police officer, sweetheart. I’m a doctor.” 

“The kind that makes people better?” he asked, still looking down at his fingers that were twiddling in his lap. 

“Not that kind, actually. I examine people after they’ve died to see how they passed away. What about you?” she asked. She were going to play around with this Batman thing. It seemed to be working so far.

He looked at her confused, so she clarified. “I mean, by day, you’re Cash, but at night, you put on the mask and become the Caped Crusader.” She made circles with her fingers and brought them up to her face to simulate a mask. That made him smile.

“Batman never lets anyone push him around and he fights for those that can’t fight for themselves,” he said. He was proud of Batman, but as much as he wanted to be him, he didn’t think of himself that way. “But I’m not Batman, I get pushed around all the time.”

That was the opening she needed. When Spencer had been filling her in on the case, she asked what she was supposed to use to open him up; Spencer said she’d know. “You’re not the only one, you know? I got pushed around too.”

“Really?” he asked sweetly. It was as if he thought he was completely alone in his suffering. “Who pushed you around?”

“A professor in college,” she admitted. It wasn’t like she wanted to broadcast her past to the other members of the team, but if being honest got him to open up, then she’d do it. “He was a very bad man, but I was able to get away from him and I’ve never had to see him ever again.” He was still looking down on occasion, so she leaned down on her elbows. “You know, Batman. You can get away from your bad man too. I can help you.”

Cash’s lip started to quiver. “It’s going to be okay, honey,” Y/N said, extending her hand across the table but not touching him. “Just tell me what happened.”

It didn’t matter what he started with - Deacon or his own father - she just wanted him to talk. This poor child had been through enough. “I didn’t want to hurt him,” he said softly as a tear fell from his eye. “He was gonna tell his parents about my dad.”

“Deacon knew about your dad?” she asked. She didn’t want to say too much. She just wanted to feed him enough feedback to keep him talking. “Why didn’t you want him to say anything?”

For the second time so far, he looked directly at her. “Because then my dad would hurt me more and no one would do anything anyway. Dad said so.”

His father had threatened him on top of physical and sexual abuse. Y/N wanted him dead, but she kept her focus. “What did he say?”

“Dad said that no one would ever believe an 11-year-old. He has friends that are policemen. They’d never believe me.”

“I believe you,” she replied as the tears filled her eyes. “I believe you, Batman.”

“Dad hits mom all the time,” he started. With a sigh of relief, she let the tension in her shoulders go. He was talking. “He says she can’t do anything right…he doesn’t always hit Callie and Grace, but I try to help mom, so he hits me a lot. It’s always somewhere I can cover with clothes.” His father was a sneaky fucking bastard.

“Is that what Deacon was going to tell his parents about?” she asked. She assumed not. That was likely something Deacon’s parents had already picked up on, but it would be much more difficult to pick up on another kind of abuse. He bristled at her question, bring his arms up to hug himself tighter. “It’s okay. You can tell me. I’ll protect you.”

At first, Cash looked away ashamed. He didn’t want to admit what his father was doing, and Y/N was afraid she had lost him. “He comes into my room at night,” he whispered. “He says that’s how fathers love their sons, but he’s lying. Deacon said so.”

“Deacon said his father didn’t do that. That my dad was a bad guy and if I told the police, I could make it stop, but I told him my dad had friends and it wouldn’t make a difference,” he said, hesitating before he began again. “I didn’t want to hurt Deacon, but when we were walking out back he said he was going to tell his dad, and I got scared, so I pushed him to the ground and I put my hands on his neck! He was kicking and crying and then when I got up he wasn’t moving! He was my only friend…Joseph didn’t even like me. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” When he finished rambling, he burst into tears, his face turning red as he ran to Y/N’s side of the table and hugged her. 

She was caught off guard, but he trusted her, so she allowed him to bury his head in her shoulder and cry. “What happened with the Boy Scout uniform?” she asked. That was the one piece that didn’t fit. It made it seem like it wasn’t just a crime of passion; there was some part of him that was curious. 

“It ripped during the fight,” he said softly. “I was mad and scared and I didn’t know what to do. I thought it was the only place to hide it.”

“Listen, Batman,” she started, taking the scared boy’s face in her hands. “I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen, but I can tell you that your father will never, ever touch you again, okay? I promise you. He’ll never hurt you, or your mother, or your sisters ever again.”

He continued to cry into her shoulder until he couldn’t cry anymore, practically falling asleep until she stood up to go outside. “You stay here, sweetheart,” she said, as she placed his head on the desk. “I’ll be back.”

Quietly, she stepped out of the room and released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “You did great,” Hotch said. “I know that couldn’t have been easy for you, but thank you.”

“Please tell me I can keep my promise to him,” she begged. “His father won’t be able to get near them again, will he?”

“No, he won’t,” Spencer said as he gathered her head to his chest. “The mother thought the father was abusing him but she was too scared to say anything. While you were in there with him, we told her and she broke down and confessed everything he’d ever done. He’s not getting near them again.”

Thank god. “What’s gonna happen to him?” she asked, looking inside to the sleeping boy who wanted nothing more than to be superhero. “He knows what he did was wrong. Is he gonna go to jail?”

“He’ll probably end up in juvie for a few years,” Emily said. “He’s too young to be tried as an adult and he seems to be remorseful. Given the circumstances, he probably won’t be going away for long.”

JJ piped up from the back of the room. “And when he gets out, his father will be in jail.”

“Should someone go and let Deacon’s parents know what happened?” Y/N asked. They should know what happened to their little boy. 

Rossi nodded. “As long as your up to it, why don’t you go with Reid?” he suggested, motioning toward Hotch for approval. 

“Okay, but before I go, I need to go talk to him again,” she said, as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I need to tell him it’s going to be okay.”

—–

“You okay?” Spencer asked, as the two were driven to the Fullerton’s house. “You did a great job.”

“Thanks, babe. I just feel so bad for Deacon and Cash. Deacon was just trying to do the right thing by his friend and Cash was scared of his father. His father is the one who should be going away for murder,” she replied, staring out the window with tears in her eyes. “Disgusting son of a bitch.”

As they pulled up to the Fullerton’s house, the same officer that had accompanied Spencer to the Hensley’s said he was going to wait outside. He was sickened by the whole thing. He’d been duped by a man he thought he knew and three children, four if you included Deacon, were victimized. “Let’s go do this,” Spencer said. “You can do this.” He grabbed her hand to help her out of the car, giving it a reassuring squeeze as they approached the door. 

Knock. Knock.

“Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton?” Spencer said as Charlotte opened the door. “I’m Dr. Reid, this is my colleague Dr. Y/L/N.” He looked down and realized he was still holding her hand and released it. He had introduced her as colleague after all. It was probably unprofessional. 

“Did you figure out what happened to Deacon?” Mr. Fullerton asked. 

“Yes, I’m sorry to tell you that Cash Jr. is the person that killed your son,” he replied, watching as the shocked parents were consumed by wracking sobs. 

“What happened?” Charlotte asked. “Why would he do such a thing? We love that boy like he was our own.”

It was at that point that Y/N felt the need to speak up. “Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton, Cash Jr. was being physically and sexually abused by his father. Deacon knew and wanted to tell you, so that you would tell the cops and Cash would stop being hurt. But his father had threatened him to never tell anyone, so when Deacon said he was going to tell, Cash panicked, which is what led to his death.”

“Oh my god,” Austin cried, turning around and throwing a vase across the room. “That bastard! Is Senior going to jail?”

“Yes, he will be as well,” Spencer said. “We just wanted to come by and tell you the whole story.”

Charlotte swallowed hard and asked the last thing either one of them expected. “Where is Junior? Can we see him?”

“He’s at the station now,” Spencer responded. “Are you sure you want to see him?” He and Y/N knew how they felt about the whole situation, but it would’ve been rational for Austin and Charlotte to hold a grudge against the boy. “That might not be such a good idea.”

Austin placed his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “We really do love that boy. After we lost our little girl, we found ourselves getting very close with the Hensley kids. Junior may have killed our little Deacon, but it’s his father’s fault.”

“I want him to know we don’t blame him. He’s been through enough,” Charlotte cried. “Can we please see him?”

“Yes,” Spencer said as he showed them out the door. “You can come back with us.”

Ten minutes later, Y/N, Spencer, Officer Perry, and Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton were back at the station. “They would like to see Cash,” Reid said to Hotch when they got back. 

“Go on in,” Hotch said, opening the door. 

As the grieving parents walked in, Junior’s shoulders stiffened. “Cash honey,” Charlotte said. “We know you were scared. We know you didn’t mean to hurt Deacon.”

“I didn’t want to,” he sobbed. “I was scared. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Cash flew into another fit of sobs. Against what everyone suspected, both parents embraced the little boy, the one that killed their son, and told him that everything was going to be okay.


	18. Chapter 18

The difference between working on those that were already dead and talking with those that were still living was astounding. As Y/N stared out the window of the jet, still on the ground before takeoff, she wondered how her boyfriend and his friends managed to do what they did day in and day out for years on end. 

Talking with Cash Jr. for a sum total of about 20 minutes had drained her. Her eyes began to flutter closed, heavy with sleep, as everyone else boarded the jet. “Hey,” Spencer said quietly, taking off his jacket before sitting down by her side. “You doing any better?” 

After interviewing the scared little boy, she’d excused herself, telling her friends that she’d meet them back on the jet in a couple of hours. She needed time to herself to clear her thoughts. Traveling with the team, no less being so close to the case, had been depressing. “A little bit,” she breathed, leaning into his shoulder as everyone else got on board. “I just keep thinking about both of those boys. I mean…all Deacon wanted to do was help his best friend, and Cash was just scared of his father. Those two families, Spence. Their lives are irrevocably changed. The Fullerton’s lost both of their children, and the one they loved as their own is the one that took their boy away. And the Hensley’s have to recover from years of abuse. Even if it’s only for a few years, Cash will be put away, alone with the thoughts of what his scumbag father did to him. How do you do it, babe? How do you deal with living victims every day?” In her quiet ramblings, the tears had risen in her eyes again. She was glad she’d chosen the path of the dead rather than that of the living. 

“It’s difficult,” he replied honestly, as Hotch and Emily sat across from them. “I won’t lie about that. And sometimes those exact questions overwhelm me, but for the most part I am able to think about the good that we do. Even on the worst cases, there is a good part about solving it. In this case, Cash will never have to be abused by his father ever again, and the rest of the family was able to get away from him. That probably wouldn’t have happened had we not been here.”

Once everyone else was on board, the jet took off. Y/N was thankful that they were leaving this small town behind. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to accompany them again for some time. It had been interesting work, but the idea of having to deal with live victims again made her want to never accompany them again. “I guess that’s true,” she replied. “Thanks.”

Spencer pulled the armrest up from in between them so he could gather her to his chest. Hopefully, she could fall asleep for a little while and forget a little of what she’d just been through. Not only had she been asked to do something that was very much outside her realm of responsibility, but she had used very personal information to connect with Cash. The reality of her past abuse had only recently come to light, and only to Spencer, so having to share that in front of the rest of the team couldn’t have been easy for her.

“Thank you again for what you did, Y/N,” Hotch said softly as she lay on Spencer’s chest. 

JJ passed their seats to go to the bathroom. “That couldn’t have been easy. Did that…?”

“Yea,” she responded sleepily. “What I told him was true. Thankfully, I was able to get away from him before it went past touching, but it was still traumatic.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Garcia said, coming over to give her a hug. “What’s his name?”

“Nicholas Boyland.” Both Garcia and Spencer pulled out their phones to do a quick search of his name, but Y/N looked away. She couldn’t bear to see his face if she could help it, especially not in her vulnerable state. When Spencer pulled up the photo, his body clenched; the man looked so unbelievably normal, and all he wanted was to rip his tongue out through his throat for putting Y/N through hell. 

Even though Hotch was right there and listening intently, Garcia looked up from her phone. “You just say the word and I can make this man’s life miserable,” she said with a wink.

“Garcia…” Hotch warned. Although he smiled, secretly agreeing with Garcia’s vendetta. 

When Y/N had been interviewing Cash, the team had been taken aback by her confession. Someone had victimized her in a similar way. They all turned to Spencer with a look of solidarity. If they knew who he was, and ever saw him, they’d kill him slowly. But all of them couldn’t help but admire her strength, especially given that she wasn’t even required to interview victims as part of her job. “Thanks, Garcia,” she said. “I’m hoping I never see him again. Unfortunately, I’ll probably never forget his face, but I hope to never see him in person.” Yawning, she leaned further into Spencer’s chest and attempted to sleep, falling deeper as his heartbeat rocked her to sleep like a lullaby.

—–

About an hour and a half later, they made it back to DC. “Take her home,” Hotch said to Spencer. Most everyone else was going to go back to the office to get a start on some paperwork, but she’d been through enough. “You can start on paperwork tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Hotch,” she said sleepily.

He shook his head. “No. Thank you. Again.”

“Let’s get out of here,” she yawned, practically collapsing into Spencer’s lanky frame. “I need sleep. You gonna stay over tonight?”

“Do you want me too?” he asked. “Would you rather be alone?”

“No, definitely not.” After this case, what she needed was Spencer’s arms wrapped around her as she fell asleep. “As long as you don’t mind that our make-up sex will once again, need to put on hold,” she laughed. 

“Not a problem,” he chuckled. “It’ll be more than worth the wait, I’m sure.”

As Spencer drove them back to her place, leaving her car in the parking garage of the BAU, Y/N fell asleep again. She was passed out in the passenger seat when he finally got back. For late at night, he hit every red light there was. Instead of trying to wake her up, he unbuckled her seatbelt and lifted her bridal style to carry her up the stairs. “It’s okay, Spence,” she said when she heard him huffing and puffing. It was three floors up. The fact that he’d managed to get up two flights of stairs without dropping her was amazing. “I need to get my key out anyway.”

Lazily, she opened her eyes and leaned against him as they walked up the last flight of stairs. “What’s that?” she said, leaning down to pick up the flower on the floor. “Looks like someone dropped a flower in a rush. Hopefully their bouquet isn’t missing too much else. Do you know what one it is?” Y/N turned toward Spencer with the pinkish-purple flower in hand. 

“It’s a rhododendron,” he said. “Most commonly found in Asia and near the Appalachian mountain range.” Of course he knew.

Clumsily picking the lock with her key, she finally opened the door and threw the flower in the trash before walking into her bedroom and collapsing onto the bed. Neither even bothered to get changed. They were too tired. Instead, Spencer lifted the blanket and came to lay behind her and falling asleep in a matter of minutes.


	19. Chapter 19

“How’re you feeling today?” Spencer asked as he was driving into work the next morning. 

“Not too bad, but I’m going to take a few of my vacation days so I can have off for a couple of days. I didn’t expect that case to hit me as hard as it did.” She’d been up nearly all night, tossing and turning with Spencer by her side. But she did her best to stay still, drowning in her own thoughts. He had work in the morning, and she knew pretty much the second she hit the bed that she wasn’t going to go to work the next day. “I have my intern, Jessica, taking over for a couple of days so I can collect my thoughts.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” he replied. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot over the past couple days. Have any idea what you’re gonna do on your impromptu vacation?”

She hadn’t actually given it any thought, but considering that she was going to try and put what happened in Kentucky behind her, it was probably best that she didn’t just hang around her apartment all day. Isolation meant being at home with her own thoughts. Dangerous territory. “Well, I think I’ll probably go pamper myself. Get my haircut, do my nails, maybe do a little shopping. I’ll of course need coffee, and then I’m not sure what. Do you know if you have another case yet?” She couldn’t imagine. The thought of going to another town, where another family was having their life ripped apart, made her want to throw up. But Spencer and his team were used to such quick turnaround - at least as much as they could be. 

“We don’t just yet,” he sighed thankfully. “We’ll probably be doing paperwork for most of the day. Have fun, okay. You need to take your mind off everything.”

“Definitely,” she replied, as she set the phone and speaker and began to get changed. “Maybe you can help with the distractions when you get home later.”

“I would love that,” he laughed. “I’ll see you later. I’m just getting to work.”

“See you later, babe,” she said. “If you do end up with a case, be safe, okay. I’d miss you if anything happened to you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

As she hung up the phone and finished getting changed, she decided to go get some coffee first. It was first thing in the morning - and she was never a morning person - so caffeine was needed pretty much yesterday. Anytime she went first thing in the morning, she got the same thing. A large coffee with half-and-half and three artificial sweeteners, plus a blueberry scone. The perfect mix of caffeine and sugar that would give her a boost for the rest of the day. 

After putting on her most comfortable jeans, a red t-shirt and a light coat, she made her way out of the apartment and down the street to the coffee shop. It was a beautiful day out - not a cloud in the sky. “Morning,” she said to the barista behind the counter. “Can I get a…”

“A large coffee with half-and-half, three artificial sweeteners, a blueberry scone,” she responded, handing Y/N her order. The girl was relatively new. She must’ve been good, because she remembered her order and had it ready for her. How did she even know she was going to come in this morning? That was weird. Didn’t matter. Y/N pulled the cash out of her pocket and handed it to the young woman with a smile. 

“Have a great day.”

With her order in hand, she walked down the street to the salon she normally frequented. She had all the time in the world, so instead of taking her food inside and eating while she got her hair done, she decided to lean against the pole outside and people-watch as she sipped at her coffee and nibbled at her scone. As she finished up the last bite of her scone, she felt a shiver go up her spine. It wasn’t cold, so that was weird. But she shook it off and headed inside. “Hey Y/N,” her hairdresser said. “Do you want the usual?”

“Actually no,” she replied. “I’ve been wanting to get it cut like asymmetrical and shoulder length for a while, so I think I’m just gonna go for it.” For an hour and a half, she sat in the chair, the cocoon building up around her as the hair fell to the floor. At the end, she broke out, feeling like a completely new person. 

“What’re you up to now?” the hairdresser asked as Y/N paid for her haircut. “I assume you’re off for the day. Maybe pampering?”

“Exactly,” she replied, running her hands through her new cut and then waving her fingers in front of her face. “Nails next. Then shopping.” The nail salon was another block down from her apartment, so she pushed open the door and turned right, running straight into someone, a woman, who nearly spilled her coffee and Y/N. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said. 

Nothing got on her hair, so Y/N was fine. “Don’t worry about it.” As she turned from the woman, she caught a glimpse of something she thought she recognized across the street, but a truck passed in that direction before she was able to focus on what it was, and once it moved, whatever it was had disappeared. Another hour passed before she emerged from the nail salon with perfectly-manicured lavender-colored nails.

Now, where do I go shopping?

She didn’t really need anything, but she did want a new leather jacket, so maybe she’d go to the mall and indulge herself. The walk to the mall was sun-filled and deliciously warm. It was really the perfect day. As soon as she entered Macy’s, an amazing, picture-perfect leather jacket caught her eye. She moved toward it with all the determination of a bull going after the red cape at a bullfight. Slipping it on felt like slipping into her bed after a long day - just perfect. 

As she spun around and went to look in the mirror, make sure it looked as amazing as it felt, she heard a couple of clicks behind her and turned to see a man in a baseball cap and sunglasses taking a picture of her. Immediately, he turned away realizing he’d been caught. What a creep. Probably using her as a masturbatory aid. Whatever. You do you, she thought to herself. I’m buying this amazing leather jacket that makes me look like a million dollars. Happy with her pick, she walked up to the counter to make her purchase. It was going to cost a pretty penny, but it was also genuine leather, so it should last for a while. Whatever. She deserved it. The last few days practically required this purchase. 

For the rest of the day, Y/N decided to just wander around the mall, window-shopping and browsing through any store she wanted. She picked up an adorable little bunny bobblehead for Garcia to put on her desk. A new perfume wafted in her direction and she ended up walking out of the store with three bottles, one for her, one for JJ and one for Emily. And an amazing Captain American tie caught her eyes for Spencer. All in all, it was a really relaxing day. Spencer had called around 4 o’clock and said he was leaving a little early. Paperwork was driving him crazy. “Should I go back to your apartment?” he asked. She’d given him a key about a week earlier, so she told him to just let himself in and she’d be home in a little bit. She was going to take a leisurely walk home with her purchases in tow.

Finally, she walked through the door about 5:30 PM and dropped her bags at the door. “Hey babe,” she said upon entry. “How was work today?”

“Amazingly boring,” he replied with a laugh. “But sometimes that’s completely necessary.”

Agreed. Sometimes boring was actually really great. She showed off her purchases, including her new favorite item of clothing - the leather coat she’d gotten earlier. “It looks absolutely stunning on you,” he said, “Obviously. I’m gonna go to the bathroom and then we can eat dinner, watch a movie, and then maybe do a little something else.” He winked as he turned away, which made her laugh. He was such a dork. One of the reasons she adored him.

Walking into the kitchen, she noticed the pinkish-purple flowers in the vase. She thought they were the same ones she’d found at the door the night before. They were very pretty. That was another reason she liked Spencer; he would do randomly nice things for no reason. “Thanks for the flowers, babe,” she said with a smile as he emerged from the bathroom.

“I thought you bought those for yourself,” he said as his face dropped. “You didn’t buy these?”

“No…” she said, stepping back from the vase in horror. “You didn’t buy these…Then where did they come from?”


	20. Chapter 20

Someone had been in her apartment.

“Spence, w-w-what do you mean you didn’t buy these?” Y/N asked, shaking as she collapsed onto the floor into a heap of nervous energy. In three long strides, Spencer came to kneel by her side. “How did they get in here?”

“I don’t know,” he said softly. “But I didn’t buy them. You’re gonna stay at my place for a while, while we look into this. Go pack some things.” He brought his hands to the sides of her face, taking her in his embrace.

While Y/N ran into her bedroom in a fit of hysterics to pack what she might need in the immediate future, Spencer called up Garcia. “Garcia, I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything for you, 187, what can I do you for?” she said cheerily. 

He turned around to Y/N who was running around the apartment in a frenzy and motioned for her to breathe. “I need you to access the security system at Y/N’s apartment building.”

“Okay…” she said, as she slapped away at the keys. “Why?”

Spencer turned around, approaching the rhododendrons with caution. “Y/N had the day off, so she went out to do some things, and when we met up at her apartment a vase of flowers was sitting on the counter. Neither of us bought them.”

“Oh my god,” she cracked. “Someone was in her apartment? Are you still there right now? Get out of there!”

After packing some clothes, toiletries and anything else she might need, Y/N came to sit on the couch, her head in her hands as she stared blankly at the rhododendrons. “We are still here for a few minutes while she packs some things,” he said as he crossed the apartment to sit by her side. Having her out of his sight for even a second would scare him now. “Can you see if anyone approaches her apartment between 10 AM and 4 PM today?”

Spencer had put the phone on speaker, so both he and Y/N could hear Garcia frantically typing away at the keyboard. “Lemme see, lemme see…here!” she exclaimed. “There is a man in a baseball cap, picking the lock at her apartment at 1:30 this afternoon. He has the flowers in hand. But I can’t see his face that well.”

Why? Why her? Why now? She’d been through enough. And now someone was after her? “What do we do now, Spence?” As she looked around at the apartment, she wondered if she would ever feel safe here again. Someone had stood in her kitchen. Someone had picked the lock. “I’m scared,” she cracked, clutching her heart as it lurched in her chest.

“I know,” he said, bringing his arm around her shoulder. “Garcia, I need you to tell Hotch what’s going on. She’s going to stay with me tonight and I’m bringing her in with me to the BAU in the morning.” 

As Garcia got up and ran toward Hotch’s office, she warned them to be safe. “Y/N, it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna find him.”

“Thanks, Garcia.”

Spencer hung up the phone and leaned back into the couch. “Anything else you might need? We aren’t coming back here until we catch this guy. You’re staying with me and you don’t go anywhere without an escort of some kind.”

She hated the idea of being babysat, but someone was very obviously after her. She’d have to deal. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Once they left the apartment, she looked back up the stairs in horror. She might not ever be back in this apartment again. Honestly, even if they caught the guy, which she truly believed they would, she wasn’t sure if she would ever have the courage to come back here. However, the idea of going to Spencer’s place left her feeling a little bit better; he would be right by her side. 

Thankfully, he didn’t live too far away, so they were soon in his place getting ready to go to bed for the night. When Spencer came out of his bathroom, he found Y/N sitting cross-legged on the bed in a daze. “What if he gets me Spence?” she cried. “What do I do?”

Sitting down next to her, Spencer gathered her to his chest. “You are great at reading people. If someone gets to you, you read them, and you play along as best you can, because I promise, I will not stop until I find you.”

“Will you hold me while I fall asleep?” she asked softly, playing out every possible scenario in her head. They could find him immediately. He could catch her. He could kill her. She shook with the thought of what this man would do to her if he got his hands on her. 

As she shook, Spencer noticed she was so much more timid than he had ever seen her before. It was unsettling. And he vowed to find the person that had reduced her to this. With a deep breath, she leaned into him and pulled the blanket over them both, shaking in his arms as she did her best to fall asleep with seeing a mysterious face surrounded by flowers.

—–

The following morning, Spencer and Y/N made their way into the BAU together. Upon entry into the bullpen, the team was there, surrounding another vase. “Oh god,” Y/N said, holding her throat in an attempt to keep from vomiting. “Those were delivered this morning?”

“Yea,” Emily said, handing her the piece of paper. “The message was meant for us though.”

You can’t protect her.  
With a sob, she turned into Spencer’s chest as he looked at the small piece of paper. “Yes, I can,” he whispered as she cried. “I will.”

“Y/N,” Hotch said, walking toward her from his office. “Is there anyone you can think of that might be coming after you?”

“No,” she cried. “I don’t go anywhere anymore but work, the coffee place, and maybe a store or two. Could this be someone random? Just…you know…found me and fixated on me?”

“It’s possible,” Morgan said. “But the flowers indicate something more obsessional, which would indicate personal knowledge, at least perceived personal knowledge.”

“So you’re saying that either this man knows me, or he thinks he knows me?” she asked. As she craned her head, she could see Garcia coming toward her with a picture.

It was a picture from outside her apartment. “This is the only angle I could get, but does that look like anyone you know?”

Immediately, it dawned on her that although it didn’t seem like she knew him, she did recognized him. “He was at the mall yesterday…” she started, leaning back into Spencer’s arms. “While I was trying on that leather jacket I got. He took pictures of me. When I turned around, he saw me and left. I didn’t think anything of it beyond the common creeper.”

“Okay, hon,” Rossi said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “From now on, you don’t go anywhere without an escort.”

—–

Over the course of the next week, Y/N went nowhere without either Spencer or another member of the BAU at her side. Whether she went to the office, to grab a cup of coffee, or even to use a public bathroom, someone was right there with her. Twice more, rhododendrons found their way into her field of vision. Once at her coffee shop and the other at her dry cleaner. Both owners claimed that a man came in, paid for what he ordered and left, “forgetting” a bouquet of flowers along the way. Whoever this man was, he was everywhere. Pervading every aspect of her life until she felt like she couldn’t turn anywhere without feeling a breath at the nape of her neck. Another morning, another walk into the BAU when she should’ve been going to her office.

“Y/N?” her intern, Jessica, said into the phone. “I have an emergency. Can you get over here?” Jessica didn’t panic. That was the reason she’d hired her, so if she was panicking something was definitely wrong. Assuring her she’d be there as soon as possible (apparently there was a paperwork issue), Y/N turned to the team and asked if someone would drive her over.

“I’ll take you,” JJ said. “Something wrong?”

“Jessica’s just having an issue with paperwork and she’s panicking, so I told her I’d drive over.”

“Let’s go.”

Within 10 minutes, they were outside the medical examiner’s office. “I’ll be right out,” Y/N said. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Paperwork is stupid.”

“It always is,” JJ laughed.

As Y/N walked inside, she wondered how much longer she would have to be escorted to and from work and everywhere else she felt like going. Freedom was vastly underrated. After turning the key in the lock and walking through to her office in the back, she looked up.

“I’m sorry,” Jessica said, shaking as a man stood behind her with a gun to her back. “He said he’d shoot me if I didn’t call.” Emerging from the shadows, the man that had followed her to the mall and stood outside her apartment with a vase full of flowers, stood before her. He lifted his hand to his glasses to take them off.

He had a beard now. Crow’s feet forming around his eyes from the wear of the past decade. But those eyes. Those piercing eyes. Ones she would never forget. It was him. “Professor Boyland. What are you doing here?”


	21. Chapter 21

“Why do you think I’m here?” he said coolly, smiling as though he wasn’t pointing a gun at her intern’s back. “I’m here for you. I’ve kept a close eye on you since you left my classroom that day.” You mean when I smacked you across the face after you stuck your hand down my pants? Let’s call it for what it is. “I’m so proud of all you’ve accomplished.” 

Okay, that was creepy. Her assaulter had never forgotten her. Tracked her for nearly 10 years. “You’ve been planning this since I last saw you?” she asked, never taking her eyes off Jessica. The poor girl looked like she was about to piss herself. Y/N would’ve been in the same position if it wasn’t for the fact that she was trying not to vomit.

“Yes,” he said, keeping the gun trained on Jessica while walking to her side. “I was wrong about you. I said you’d never make it - that your ambitions were too high; I was so wrong about you. I like that. When a woman can exceed my expectations.” 

She swallowed hard, wondering if there was any way to alert JJ out in the car without getting Jessica hurt in the process, but the second her hand even inched toward her pocket where her phone sat, he pointed the gun at her. “You were,” she said hesitantly. She didn’t want to piss him off, especially with another potential victim in the room, but she needed to keep the conversation going to try and think of a way out of this. “I’ve worked very hard to get where I am. What can I help you with professor?” She was afraid she already knew the answer to that question. 

“I’m going to need you to come with me,” he said, bringing the gun up to Jessica’s head and putting his hand on the trigger. 

He was getting ready to shoot. “I will only go with you, if you let her live!” she said quickly. “Do anything to hurt her at all and I will go nowhere with you.” The fire in her eyes must’ve convinced him that she meant what she said. If he hurt Jessica, she would kick and scream as he dragged her away.

He didn’t want to take the risk, but he also wanted her. “I let her live and you’ll come with me. No screaming? No nothing?”

“Yes, but only if you leave Jessica alone. Completely.”

“Fine,” he said, turning toward Jessica and walking toward Y/N. As he put his arm around her neck, he continued to aim the gun down at the scared intern. “You count to 100 before you get up.”

As Jessica started the countdown, Y/N hoped that she took note of what name she’d said. It would give the team a heads up if they knew who it was. “Jessica, listen to me,” she said, as Boyland began to drag her out the back door and away from JJ. Away from solace. “This was not your fault, okay? I don’t blame you. You’re going to be okay.”

“Enough of that,” he said, pulling her by her hair out of the door and toward his car. Just as she thought about her phone, he reached into her pocket, grabbed the phone and threw it on the ground, stomping it into pieces. “Now get in the backseat and lie down. I don’t want your face on any cameras. We’re going to change up your look a little bit when we get to where we’re going.”

“Okay,” she said, her heart lurching in her throat as she slipped into the back. Please let Jessica remember the name. Please. It was Y/N’s only hope. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Putting his gun on the passenger side seat, he laughed. “I don’t plan on hurting you. We’re going to be happy together. You’ll see.”

—-

After waiting nearly 15 minutes for Y/N to return, JJ looked at her phone and decided to go in and see if there was anything she could do to help, only to find a young woman lying on the floor and counting. “Where is Y/N?” JJ asked frantically, coming to kneel at the woman’s side. “What happened?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m Y/N’s intern, Jessica. Someone came in here with a gun and said he was going to shoot me unless I called Y/N. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” JJ cradled Jessica’s head in her arms before she ran out the back door to see Y/N’s phone in pieces on the ground. 

“Can you describe who took her?” JJ asked as she ran back inside to the terrified Jessica. “What did he look like?”

“White guy, beard, sunglasses, tall, average build. But Y/N said a name. She knew him,” Jessica sobbed. 

She knew him? How? “Who was it? What name did she use?”

“Professor Boyland.”

“Shit!” she said, pulling her own phone out of her pocket. “Hotch! Y/N’s stalker is the professor that abused her. Professor Boyland! He took her!” The tears poured from her eyes as she realized what she’d done. She should have gone inside with her. She should have known he would set a trap. If anything happened to her, she would never forgive herself.

—-

Just five minutes later, the entire team screeched up to the ME’s office with Spencer running out of the car in a rage. “What happened? Where is she?” he asked. 

“He took her,” JJ cried. “I’m sorry, Spence.”

“Why didn’t you go in with her?” he screamed. “What were you thinking? He’s got almost 20 minutes on us now! How could you be so stupid?!”

“Spence,” she said, attempting to turn him around. “She said it was just a paperwork thing and that she’d be out in a few minutes.” As she placed her hands on his arms, he ripped them out of grasp and knocked over everything on Y/N’s desk.

“Dammit! Fuck!”

Hotch walked into the room to Spencer screaming after checking out the back and bagging her phone for evidence. “Calm down, Reid.”

“Calm down? Are you kidding me?! Hotch, she’s missing. The man that violated her put his hands on her again and you want me to calm down!? No! I told her I’d protect her! You didn’t stay calm when Hayley’s life was on the line and I won’t now!” He looked down to see the phone and nearly collapsed right there. They couldn’t use the phone to track her. All they had was his name.

Leaving everyone behind, Spencer ran to one of the cars and hopped in racing back to the BAU by himself. 

—-

Spencer had told her to play along. As much as it pained her, she tried to carry on a conversation and keep his eyes off of her pants pocket. No one knew she had a separate phone specifically for work calls, but if Garcia would look into her records like she knew she would, there was a chance Garcia would see she had a second phone registered in her name and attempt to track that. But in order for her to turn it on she needed to not raise suspicion. “Where are we going to go?” she asked, steadying her voice so that her anxiety wouldn’t betray how scared she was. When she thought about their last encounter and that he had tracked her for almost a decade, the reality of what he actually wanted from her made her shiver.

“Some place just for us,” he said calmly. “We’ll be happy there. I promise.” He looked into the rearview mirror and caught her eye. “You look just as beautiful as when you were my student. Even more radiant.” 

After swallowing the lump in her throat, she feigned a smile, pulling the corners of her mouth up and hoping it was convincing. “Thank you…Nicholas. You look different from when I last saw you.” Just keep calm. Spencer won’t stop looking for you.

At the sound of his name, he softened further. Flattery was working so far. “Yea, I wanted my beard to grow in. I think I look better with it.”

Flatter him. “You look good both ways, but I like the beard too,” she said leaning her hand on her head. If there was a chance that her hand could be seen through a window, Spencer might be able to identify her by the ring on her hand. Her great-grandmother’s ring adorned her right ring finger and it was very distinctive. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice. Looking up from the window, she could see that he was driving her out of the city. Buildings turned to trees rather quickly. He was isolating her. “Will you please tell me where we’re going? I don’t like surprises,” she said, leaning upward slightly in an attempt to meet his gaze.

With one fluid motion, he grabbed the gun from the front seat and pointed it at her head. “You’ll see when we get there. Now no more talking,” he said sternly. His tone betrayed his next movements as he laid the gun back on the seat and caressed the side of her face, shivers rolling down her spine as she felt that touch she swore she’d never feel again. “We’re going to be so happy together. Don’t you worry.”


	22. Chapter 22

Looking to the road ahead, he took a deep breath.

His nearly 10-year-long wait was finally over. All of this time and work and patience had paid off; she was here and she was perfect. More amazing than he had remembered. As she sat in the back of his car, relaxing with her hand resting on her head, he wondered how he could have ever doubted her. And now she was his. This brilliant, beautiful woman. Where they were going, they could finally have the life he started imagining for them when she first left his classroom all those years ago, but he’d have to evade her friends first. He should’ve killed that girl. He was going to have to go to plan B because he left her alive.

He turned onto the turnpike toward the countryside where he had a place set up for them, the trees whirring past in a blur as he made his way toward his future; the one he always wanted. In her smile, radiating from the back seat, he could see her waking up next to him. He could see her cooking his favorite meal. He could see her tending to their children. He could see it all now.

All he had to do now was get them far away so no one would ruin their fantasy. No one would come in their way anymore.

—–

“Garcia!” Spencer screamed as he ran into her office after leaving the rest of the BAU behind. He had no time to wait on anyone else, huffing and puffing as he screamed for Penelope. “Where are you?” When he walked into her office, she wasn’t there.

“I’m right here,” she said, sitting back down at her computer after going to grab a muffin. “I needed comfort food. What can I do?” She always felt so helpless when one of their own was in trouble and she couldn’t go out and do anything to help. “How can I help?”

“You can be at your computer, for one!” he yelled, causing her to jump back in her seat. Reid never yelled; he knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t keep his mind straight and things kept bursting out of him when he hadn’t meant them to. “I need you to look up everything you can on Nicholas Boyland. What has he been doing since Y/N was in his class? Where has he lived? Does he own multiple properties? If so, where? I need every speck of dirt this man has ever come into contact with analyzed for some trace of where she might be.”

“What about a phone?” she asked hopefully. “Can I track it?”

It had been destroyed at the crime scene. The only thing they might have been able to get off the phone was a fingerprint, but they already knew who he was, so that wasn’t going to do them any good. “He destroyed it,” he said angrily as he turned to run to his desk. “Just get me information! Now!”

—–

“We’ve gotta find her, Hotch,” JJ said as the rest of the team drove back to the BAU. “If we can’t find her, he’s never going to forgive me. I’ll never forgive myself.”

Derek swallowed hard, fumbling with the phone he was holding. It was Y/N’s, crushed into pieces in the evidence bag. He wanted to believe that Reid would be okay, but without her, he wasn’t quite sure; he’d been through so much in his life already. “Reid knows it wasn’t your fault, JJ.”

“But it was,” she said, the warm tears forming a thin veil in front of her eyes. “I can’t believe I didn’t go in with her.”

Hotch would have, after all, if his ordeal with Hayley taught him anything, it was that overprotectiveness had its moments. Right now, they all needed to focus so they could find her. When they pulled back up to the BAU, they all flooded out of the car and back upstairs to the office. “What do we know?” he asked.

“This man became obsessed with her nearly 10 years ago and has tracked her ever since,” Morgan said. As an expert in obsessional crimes, he knew that wasn’t good. In all likelihood, Y/N would play along. She was smart; she knew what to do, but the second she didn’t, her life could be in danger - most likely would be. All they could hope for was that Y/N continued to play along until they could find her. 

Although they only had his name, people normally left much more of a paper trail than they intended. “If he’s been planning this for ten years, then he has a specific place he wants to take her,” Emily said as they rode up in the elevator. “He won’t deviate from that idea for any reason. Otherwise it would ruin the fantasy.”

As they left the elevator, JJ spotted Spencer sitting at his desk, angry filing through any information he had on Boyland. “Spence,” she said softly as she approached him. 

When he looked up, the former look of anger and rage turned to that of a petrified child. “I’m sorry, JJ,” he said, a tear falling from his eye and down onto the papers below. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s not your fault. There’s no way you could have known.”

She still felt that it was. “We’re gonna find her,” she said as she bent down to hug him. “We know who he is. That’s more than we have for most others. And he’s not smarter than you, no less all of us combined.”

“I’ve got something,” Garcia exclaimed, approaching Spencer hesitantly with a stack of papers. “Since Y/N was in his class, Boyland has been teaching less. He used to teach five classes a semester, but that’s gone down to two or three.”

“Probably because he’s been planning this for so long,” Morgan said. “And it says here that he owns an apartment outside the city, as well as a cabin out in the woods.”

“And he only bought that two years ago,” JJ said, searching the receipts for information. “Apparently, he paid cash, but he had to sign the papers for it so his name is here.”

Garcia’s face fell as she swallowed the lump in her throat. Apparently, she was aware of some information that everyone else wasn’t. “Since he bought it, he’s had contractors in the house. A room has been added, but a door was never ordered. Also, I found that Y/N had a separate phone, and it’s pinging at this location. Could he be keeping her…in a hole?” she asked, scared for what condition they might find her in.

“Undoubtedly, yes,” Spencer said. “We need to get there ASAP. It’s nearly two hours from here.”

From the file at her side, Garcia pulled out a picture. “I think I found his car. He’s switched the plates, but he looks the same.” Spencer took the picture in his hand, searching for any sign of Y/N. It looked like Boyland, but he couldn’t be confident.

“It’s her!” he said excitedly, pointing at the bottom of the picture.

Emily gathered herself to his side, searching the picture for some sign of what he might be talking about. “How do you know?”

“Her ring,” he said, holding it out for everyone to see. “That’s her ring. She wears it on her right ring finger. It was her great-grandmother’s ring. The diamond in the middle was her engagement ring, and the ring of leaves on the outside were added for their 50th anniversary. It’s her. She’s letting us know she’s okay. For now.” Shoving the picture back toward Garcia, he gave her a hug and apologized for snapping. “I’m sorry, Garcia.”

“I know, Boy Genius,” she sighed. “Just go get her.”

With Spencer leading the way, Hotch, Rossi, Morgan, JJ and Emily made their way downstairs to the cars, praying that Y/N would play along for just a little while longer. Through his obsession, Boyland had messed up - a lot. He left a witness. He left a paper trail, and worst of all for him, he’d still managed to underestimate Y/N and her power to survive.

—–

Nearly two hours after Boyland took her from her office, Y/N found herself in an isolated cabin in the woods. “Where are we?” she asked, as he ushered her down to the basement.

“Home.” As he spoke, she felt the bile rise in her throat. “Our home.” 

Keeping the gun trained on her, he turned around and grabbed something from the chest across from the bed. A wig. It looked exactly like her hair used to look when she was his student. She shook as he placed it on her head and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “You look so beautiful. Please, sit,” he said, motioning toward the bed. “Now, I’ve messed up a few things bringing you here, so I know your friends are going to come here and look for you. But don’t worry. They aren’t going to take you away from me.”

Yes they are. No matter what you do to me, Spencer won’t stop looking for me. He promised.

Reaching under the bed, Y/N saw a wooden container and panicked, knowing exactly what it was - a coffin. Despite the gun being trained on her, she ran, banging on the latch above her head to get out until he ran up behind her and dragged her back down the stairs, punching her in the side of head so she fell to the ground. “You are going to stay in here until they leave and then you can come out,” he yelled, ripping her coat as he threw her back toward the bed. He ran toward her again, grabbing her throat in his hand as he looked directly into her eyes. “We’re going to be happy together. I promise.” 

As he shoved her down onto her knees, she begged. “Please don’t put me in there! I’ll be quiet I swear, just don’t put me in there!” She was deathly afraid of tight spaces. With the gun at her head, he pushed her down until she was lying flat in the contained space, her limbs stuck to her sides as the tears rolled down her face and the air felt like it would suffocate her - being sucked out of her lungs with each struggling breath. 

“Just take deep breaths,” he said, his voice once again going from rageful to calm in the blink of an eye. There was a hole in the top of the coffin so she could breathe, but she couldn’t control herself. A sharp gasp escaped her as she felt the coffin move, and then it was almost pitch black, the only sliver of light shining near coming from the lamp in the room where he kept her.

“Please…Spencer… help me,” she whispered as she attempted to move her hands in the box. “Please don’t stop looking for me.” After she heard Boyland’s steps walking away from her, she heard nothing. Not only was she in a coffin, but the room he’d dragged her into was soundproof. If the entrance to this room was covered in any way, there was a chance that the team would never find her, leaving her stuck in this hellish, deep-seeded fantasy.


	23. Chapter 23

How long had it been since he pushed her under the bed? That sliver of light was still there, but it wasn’t the sun, it was a lamp, so she truly had no idea what time it was. Whether she had been in this coffin for 20 minutes, 2 hours or 2 days, she had no idea. Time blended together in the dark - only her own mind and its racing thoughts to pass the time. Only the sound of her own breathing served as the soundtrack of her capture.

As she felt the air being sucked from her lungs, she grabbed onto the denim of her pants - anything to remind her that she was real, she was alive, and she needed to fight. Even in this tight container, she had to do something. If she was going to die, she was going to go down swinging - or in this case, screaming.

Y/N was pretty sure the room she was in was soundproof, but on that one percent chance that it wasn’t she was going to scream; she was going to scream until her lungs were sore and her throat was raw. He was not going to win without a fight. He wasn’t going to get out of this without some evidence that no matter where she was, even in this coffin, he held no power over her.

“Help me!” she screamed, as she kicked the coffin with her feet. It wasn’t amazingly sturdy material, so with enough force, she might have been able to break it. She would, or die trying. “Help me! Please!”

—–

Even at 90 miles an hour with the sirens on, it was still taking way to long to get there. Spencer wanted to drive, but Hotch knew he was too close to the case, so he wouldn’t allow it. “She’s gonna be okay, kid,” Morgan insisted. “She’s a fighter.”

“I know she is,” he replied, “But this man is beyond unstable. He’s messed up so much that I don’t doubt he’ll do anything to keep her.” All of a sudden, he felt a buzzing in his pocket and pulled out his phone to see a number he didn’t recognize. The call dropped before he was able to answer it, but within a minute, the same number came up. “Hello?”

“S-Spencer?” he heard quietly on the other end.

“Y/N?” he screamed, bringing the attention of the rest of the team in his direction. While Hotch stepped on the gas, Spencer put the phone on speaker. “Are you okay? Do you know where you are?”

“I-I’m in a coffin, Spence,” she whispered. “Don’t let him convince you I’m not here. I’m in a cabin in an underground room. He put me in a coffin under a bed in that room. I’m here. Please…”

“We’re coming for you!” he screamed, hitting the seat in front of him as a message to Hotch that he didn’t care what rules he had to break to get to her on time. “Stay calm, I’m coming for you.” He waited to hear her voice again, but when he looked at the phone, the call had dropped again. “Oh my god, she’s alive,” he sighed. “Hurry!”

As they neared the cabin (they were about 10 minutes away), JJ reached into the back seat to grab everyone’s vests, passing them around so they’d be wasting no time once they arrived. Given this man’s 10-year obsession, unstable nature, extreme narcissism and willingness to do absolutely anything to get what he wanted, there was almost no doubt in any of their minds that this was going to end in some kind of shoot out.

“She’s going to be okay,” Emily said, placing her hand on his shoulder as the cabin finally came into view. “We’re not coming home without her.”

—–

Boyland looked out the window to see the FBI approaching his house, clad in their vests and guns drawn. Before opening the door for them, he went downstairs, pulling the coffin out from under the bed. “You make a sound I will shoot your boyfriend right between the eyes,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “No one will take you away from me.” 

With a smooth glide, he slid her back under the bed, assured that she wouldn’t say anything - she was too scared for his. Once they left, he would convince her that they’d be happy together, but he had one last obstacle to avoid to get to that lifelong happiness he so craved. He’d convinced her that that man wasn’t the one for her.

Walking back upstairs, he covered the hole in the floor with the piece of carpet he’d carved out, walking up to the door as the authorities knocked vigorously. “Nicholas Boyland!” he heard from outside. “FBI! Open up!”

They had their bases covered - three agents at the front door and three at the back, so he couldn’t run anywhere even if he wanted to. “Hello officers,” he said calmly, opening the door and inviting them in. “How can I help you?” If he played this coolly, and she was convinced enough that he’d shoot her boyfriend to not scream, he might actually pull this off, despite his mistakes. 

“Where is she?” her boyfriend said. “Where is Y/N?”

“I don’t know,” he said, feigning innocence. “I remember the name. She was a student of mine many years ago, but I haven’t seen her in nearly a decade.”

“Cut the crap,” Spencer said, training his gun right between his eyes. “Where. Is. Y/N?”

From the back of the house, Hotch, JJ and Morgan emerged. “Reid…” Hotch warned. All Spencer wanted to do was shoot him right now. He knew she was here, so with this scumbag out of the way, they would just have to look for her. 

“Feel free to look around,” Boyland said, motioning around the cabin. It all looked so amazingly normal. A couch in the corner, decorated with pillows no one actually used or cared about. A TV across from it, big enough for the best Super Bowl party. The kitchen was loaded with top-of-the-line appliances and looked like it was right out of a magazine. The contrast between normalcy and delusion was so stark it could barely be described.

While Boyland walked around, attempting to take the agents attention off of the area where Y/N was located, Spencer caught sight of some carpet fibers. “What’s there?” he asked, pointing to the floor. It looked like the carpet had been cut.

“Oh, that’s a bomb shelter,” he said without hesitation. “I’m a little bit of a paranoid personality. I feel like it’s only a matter of time. That’s why I’ve cut down on my teaching. Just doing enough to pay my bills.”

“Open it,” Rossi said. Borland walked over to the section of carpet and lifted it up, walking down the stairs as the BAU followed. “It looks like you’re prepared in the event of an apocalypse.”

“I am,” he replied. “I’ve got everything I need in this room.”

—–

She wanted to scream. More than anything, she wanted to scream that she was here and alive, but he had a gun. Although he would definitely be shot down in the event of a shootout, he could take down Spencer first, and she didn’t want to risk it, so she kept quiet.

“Y/N, where are you?” she heard him say. Her heart jumped at the sound of his voice, but even a one percent risk to his life was enough for her to swallow her words. “I’m here. We’re here. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“No,” she whispered to herself, hoping no one could hear her crying, “but he can hurt you.”

—–

“I am going to ask you one more time,” Morgan said. He and Hotch had gone ahead, attempting to keep some distance between Reid and Boyland. “Where is Y/N?”

Spencer pointed toward the bed in the corner. “She’s under there, isn’t she?” he said, pushing past Morgan to go and reach under the bed. Underneath the blanket, which was centimeters from the floor, he could see bottom of the coffin. As he went to reach it, Spencer heard a loud crack, which pushed him toward the floor, followed by two more. Then all he heard was a high-pitched scream.


	24. Chapter 24

Just as Spencer hit the floor, Morgan and Hotch fired off a round a piece, hitting Boyland in the shoulder and the head. 

“Spencer!” Y/N screamed, her kicking against the coffin resounding from under the bed. “Spencer!” Her throat was raw from screaming.

As Morgan knelt next to Spencer to make sure he was okay, Emily and JJ reached under the bed to pull the coffin out, freeing Y/N from her isolation. She poured out of the container, tears painting her reddened face as she crawled to his side. “Spence, oh my god, Spence,” she cried, shaking him as she looked behind her. Boyland had been shot right between the eyes. It was over. “Spence, wake up.”

“I’m f-fine,” he said quietly, a smile coming to his face as he lifted his hand to caress hers. “Vest.” Boyland had only managed to get off one round before being taken out. They knew it was going to end in a shootout. He lifted his hand to his chest, tapping the bullet with his hand. Thank god he was wearing a vest. It would’ve hit him square in the chest otherwise - killing him instantly. “Are you okay?” he asked, pushing himself up off the ground as his teammates gathered around them both. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m okay,” she sobbed, crawling into his lap. “I knew you wouldn’t stop looking for me.”

“Never,” he whispered, finally allowing the tears to fall. He’d been working on autopilot since she’d been taken, not giving his mind time to linger on what he would do if he couldn’t find her, if he’d been too late, if she’d been taken away in front of his eyes. “I knew you’d keep fighting.” As she looked down, she pulled off her shoe, examining her foot to see if she’d hurt herself by kicking the coffin. She would’ve ripped her feet apart if it meant getting back to the life she’d built for herself, the friends she never expected to have, and the boyfriend that had actually been sitting in front of her eyes for years. “We need to get you some medical attention.”

JJ reached out for her hand, but it felt so far away. With help from her and Morgan, Y/N was finally able to get to her feet. “I’m so sorry,” JJ cried, wiping Y/N’s hair out of her face.

“For what?” she asked. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was just so glad to be out of that container. Looking toward the box, she wondered how she even fit in there. It seemed so small. And if it weren’t for the team, it could’ve been her eternity. What would’ve happened if they hadn’t have found her? Would she have continued fighting until the very end? Maybe she would’ve provoked him enough to kill her and put her out of her misery. Maybe she would’ve taken her own life to end the torture. Or worse, maybe she would’ve been there for the rest of life, eventually thinking that that was where she was meant to be. Thankfully, she’d never know. She’d never have to live that reality.

“I should’ve gone into the office with you,” she said, enveloping Y/N in her arms. “If I’d been in there he wouldn’t have taken you.”

Maybe. But nothing was guaranteed. “Possibly,” she replied. “Or he could’ve killed you and taken me anyway. I don’t blame you, okay?” Suddenly, it dawned on her that the last time she’d seen her intern she was lying flat on the ground. “Jessica,” she said frantically. “Is Jessica okay? He said he was going to shoot her, that’s why I went quietly.”

“She’s fine,” Hotch said. “A little shook up, but she’s perfectly fine. Don’t worry.”

“Oh thank god,” she sighed, leaning into JJ’s shoulder. “I need to see her as soon as possible. She needs to know I don’t blame her.”

As JJ helped her up the stairs and out of the cabin, Morgan extended his hand to Spencer. “You need to get checked out too,” he said. “Getting shot is no joke.” 

“I got hit in the vest, Morgan,” he said, doubling over and taking a deep breath. “I’ll be fine.” The two started to walk away and Spencer caught sight of Boyland, taking note of the bullet wounds in his shoulder and head. “Who shot for the head?” he asked.

“Me,” he said, matter-of-factly, “I wasn’t about to let him get off another round.” And god, he was stubborn. “You’re going to have a gigantic bruise,” he said, placing his arm underneath Spencer’s to help him up the stairs. “You’re getting checked out too. If you won’t listen to me, Y/N will kill you.”

“Did I just hear that you don’t want to get checked out?” Y/N asked as Spencer came up the stairs. “Morgan’s right. You’re getting checked out or I’ll murder you.”

“You can’t boss me around,” he laughed.

“Yes, I can.”

With the ambulance just outside, Spencer went from Morgan to Y/N, taking her out to the ambulance so they could get checked out together. “I would’ve missed you bossing me around,” he laughed. “I’ve kind of grown to like it.”

“I will forever boss you around,” she replied, sitting down at the edge of the ambulance. She had a bruise on the left side of her face from the punch Boyland had thrown earlier, and her feet were a little bruised up from all the kicking, but other than that, the emotional and psychological wounds were worse than the physical. “How is he?” she asked the EMT about Spencer’s bruise. He’d been hit directly in the chest, so he was going to be massively bruised and sore for the next week or so, but he too would be fine.

After letting the EMTs do their jobs, she sat in his embrace just thinking for a moment. “Thank you,” she said, turning into him and kissing his neck. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

As the wind blew their hair about, he brought his hand up to her face and brushed his lips against hers. “I wouldn’t have. I’m too crazy about you to give up.”

“You’re crazy about me?” she smiled, washing her tongue over his bottom lip before taking his mouth in hers. “I’m kind of crazy about you too, you obnoxious pain in my ass.”

Spencer laughed as she stood up and grabbed his face in her hands, devouring his kisses while the rest of the team looked on. “I think they’re gonna be okay,” Emily said to JJ. “How’re you feeling?” She could still see the guilt painted all over JJ’s face. “She doesn’t blame you. You have to take that at face value.”

“I know,” she replied. “I just can’t help feeling like she’s going to break down at some point, realize what actually happened and what could have happened, and blame me, which I would understand, because I blame myself.”

“Neither of them blame you,” Rossi said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It’s over.”

—–

“You alright?” Spencer asked, watching as Y/N stared out the window with tears in her eyes. She’d been through so much in the past couple of weeks, it was a wonder she hadn’t broke out into sobs until now. 

She nodded, a cry getting caught in her throat as she turned to him and grabbed at her throat. “I’m alive…” she said, “Why am I crying when I’m okay? I get to go home.”

“It’s completely natural,” Spencer replied. “You’ve been through a trauma. A very real, very frightening trauma. You can’t expect that just because your alive everything is fine. You’re going to be on edge for a while, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a little bit of PTSD.” When he looked over toward JJ, he could see the guilt wash over her.

A sob rolled through her has the members of the team listened in on her horrible experience. “I just…that box…that’s my worst fear, Spence. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. If it wasn’t for the fact that I grabbed onto the pants I’m wearing, I wouldn’t have even had any sense that I was a real person, you know? Like…none of it felt real.”

“That makes sense,” he said, grabbing her hand and rubbing the back of her palm. “But you’re alive. You’re okay. I’m here and I’m not leaving.”

On the way back to Quantico, Y/N silently sobbed in the back seat, thanking any God that would listen for sparing her life while she fell asleep on Spencer’s shoulder.


	25. Chapter 25

Three months later.

\---

Before heading home, she had to stop by the office and check on Jessica, make sure she was doing okay on her own. It had been two months since she’d transferred positions. “Hey honey,” Y/N said as she walked in that evening. “How’s everything going? Everything okay? You know what you need to do, all the paperwork that needs doing?” She kept rambling - Y/N still wasn’t quite used to her new role yet. Plus, she was a perfectionist, so she needed to know that everything was being handled the way she would want it to be handled. After all, it was her reputation that was on the line; she’d established the practice - it was just that Jessica was carrying the reputation now.

“I’m all good,” she smiled. “I’ve got two bodies coming in tomorrow morning. Not murder victims thankfully. And I’ve even got a filing system in place for paperwork now.” She took Y/N’s hand and brought her over to the corner of the room. “I made this into a file room. Over here is the blank paperwork, filed for every occasion imaginable, and then over here is where I keep the files. I make a copy and keep them here for myself. It’s very neat and orderly don’t you think?” As she turned around, she smiled wide, trying to impress her former boss. 

After all that had happened, Jessica was amazed that Y/N trusted her enough to take over her office. “Woah,” she chuckled, “This is even more organized than I’m used to. It’s amazing. You’ll call me if you need any help right?” Although she was loving her new role, it was definitely more difficult than she intended to let go of her former position.

“I’m good, Dr. Y/L/N,” she smiled softly. “I promise I’ll let you know if I need anything. I just can’t thank you enough for giving me this chance after everything that happened.”

“Two things,” she said, walking up to the young woman’s side and placing her hand on her shoulder. “One, please call me Y/N, no need for formalities anymore, and two, what happened was not your fault. You did everything right, we both made it out and you’re an amazing medical examiner, okay? You’ve earned this.”

Before heading back out to the car where Spencer was waiting for her, Y/N wrapped her arms around Jessica. “You’ve more than earned this.”

“Thanks, Dr…Y/N.”

With a laugh, she turned to walk out the door. For the past two months, she’d been coming in compulsively to check on everything and make sure it was being run properly, but Jessica had it handled. Just like with Boyland, she knew what she needed to do. Y/N trusted her to do the right thing then. And she trusted her now.

—–

“How’s everything in there?” Spencer said, leaning over from the driver’s side of the car to look out her window. “Jessica okay?”

“Yea,” she said, opening the passenger’s side door and giving him a peck on the lips. “She’s all good. She’s even got a filing system in there now that puts my system to shame.” Spencer looked on in surprise. Y/N was a neat freak and a perfectionist, so for her to say that Jessica outdid her was a lot.

“Do you think you’re going to come back as often?” he asked, pulling away from the curb and back toward’s their apartment building. 

Even though they’d only been dating for about two months when she was taken by Boyland, the whole ordeal made Spencer realize just how much she meant to him and he’d asked her to move in with him. “Probably not,” she said, “she’s got it covered and I’ve got a new job now. I did tell her to call me if she needed my help though.

“She’ll be fine,” Spencer replied confidently as he turned onto their street. “You trained her well.”

“I’d like to think so.”

—–

After walking upstairs into their apartment, Spencer turned to her and grabbed her hand, spinning her around the room and dancing in place. “So how do you think you’re settling into your new position?” he asked playfully. “The people are nice? The work is interesting?”

“Definitely,” she smiled, grabbing him by the waist as they danced their way into the kitchen. “It’s very different, but I’m enjoying it and my co-workers are great.”

“Fantastic,” he said, pulling her towards the bedroom. “For now, no more work talk.” With a smoothness she wasn’t accustomed to from him, he shrugged his suit jacket off outside the bedroom door and turned the door handle, leading her inside. He loved having her next to him as they fell asleep every night. They may not have been dating for long, but he didn’t care; he’d found the person he loved and never wanted to be without her. “Only sex talk.”

“Yessss,” she said, happily pumping her fists in the air while Spencer pulled her shirt off over her head. It had been a long day, but he needed her and she needed him. Her hands cradled his neck as he lowered her to the bed, gliding down slowly against the sinewy muscles of his chest. It was only a month or so ago that his bruise from that day had finally faded away. She placed her hand over his heart and he brought her up to the head of the bed, at which point she rolled him over she could lay flush against him. She hadn’t noticed that a thin veil of tears had formed against her eyes.

“You okay?” he asked. 

She pressed her lips against his. “I’m fine. I just keep remembering that day, and what you did for me. You almost died.” Under her fingertips, she could remember the massive purple bruise that had formed after he’d taken the bullet. “I just love you a lot is all.”

“I love you too. And I’d do it again.”

After divesting themselves of the rest of their clothes, she ground her pelvis into his, teasing him ever so slightly until neither of them could take it anymore - it didn’t take long. He reached down to place himself at her entrance, but she did the rest, sliding onto his length and lying against him. She was in the mood for slow, lazy lovemaking. Even in this position, completely flush against him, they both found that they couldn’t get close enough. He wrapped his arms around her back, reaching for her hair and balling it on top of her head as they devoured each other.

“Oh god, Y/N,” he breathed, his head falling back into the pillow as she rolled her hips against his. With her right hand, she reached down, grazing it over his balls as she rode him. Grabbing her left hand, he placed it on the side of his neck and begged her to take him harder. They were both so close. “Fuck me.”

“Ah, fuck,” she cried, trembling as the waves started to roll through her. “I love you.” She collapsed onto him as his own orgasm crested and came to shore. As he spilled himself into her, she slipped her tongue into his mouth, fucking him with her tongue while he rode out his high. “That was amazing…and…”

“Necessary,” he chuckled softly. “Yea, it was. And I love you. So much.” She rolled to the side, coming to nestle herself in his embrace. She enjoyed being the little spoon and he was a cuddler, so he made a great big spoon. “Ready for work in the morning?”

“Yea,” she sighed, her eyes becoming heavy with sleep. “Especially after that. I’ll sleep like a baby.” She craned her head back and puckered her lips against his. “Night, baby.”

—–

The next morning, they both got ready and headed to work. After all she’d been through, she’d realized she had a gift for working with victims. It was difficult sure, but she had a knack for it and she was stronger than she’d given herself credit for. For some reason, she knew exactly what to do to keep herself safe and keep others out of harm’s way. 

That’s why when Hotch approached her with the possibility of joining the BAU, she jumped on it. They didn’t have anyone on the team with a medical background, so she added to the team something they didn’t already have. She meant what she’d told Spencer the night before - her co-workers were great. She loved them before she started. 

“Coffee?” Spencer asked, placing her favorite specialty drink on the table. Peppermint mocha - it didn’t matter how warm it was out, peppermint mocha was everything. “I figured you should have a special drink today considering you’re officially a member of the team now.” After accepting the role, she’d needed to pass quite a few tests, marksmanship, psychological, especially after her ordeal with Boyland, but she’d passed them with flying colors and today was the day that Hotch could officially welcome her to the team.

She smiled as she picked up her coffee, accepting Hotch’s handshake. “Welcome to the team, Y/N.”

“Thanks, Hotch,” she replied, taken aback when Garcia slapped her hands against her face in surprise. “What is it Garcia? You knew I was gonna pass right? If you doubted me I might have to hurt you.” She only squealed and pointed behind Y/N’s back, causing her to turn around and see Spencer, on one knee, with a velvet box in his hand. “Oh my god.”

“Yes, it is what you think it is,” he said with a smile, reaching out his hand and bringing her toward him. As she looked around, she saw the surprise on some faces and not on others. JJ and Morgan knew - she knew it. The rest of them had no idea. “So just shut up and listen or I’m not going to be able to get this out.”

“You can’t tell me to shut up,” she laughed, bringing her hand to her mouth as she started to cry. “But go ahead.”

“If someone had asked me a year ago, whether or not I thought I would be madly in love with the obnoxious medical examiner, I would’ve laughed and said no freaking way, but I am. And when I got that call from you that day, and heard how scared you were, I knew I would’ve done anything to trade places with you. Unfortunately I couldn’t, but, if you let me, I will be there every day for the rest of our lives. So,” he said, looking up at her with tears in his eyes, “Y/N, Will you marry me?”

As she looked down into his eyes, she started to sob. “Yes,” she cried, laughing as the rest of the team applauded. Garcia was also sobbing, waving her hands in front of her face in an attempt to dry the tears. But they kept flowing. “Yes. Then we get to piss each other off for the rest of our lives.”

“That’s the plan,” he said. He stood up and placed the ring on her finger as she kissed him. “I found the person I want to annoy for the rest of my life.”


	26. Epilogue

“Okay, Garcia,” Y/N said for the third time in as many minutes. “We really have to go now.”

“But why do you have to go? We should celebrate your and Boy Genius’ engagement all through the night!” she said, throwing fake confetti around the restaurant. After work, everyone had insisted on going out to dinner to celebrate their engagement. Everyone had at least a drink or two, and now most were three or four drinks in and very lovey-dovey, Garcia being the worst of them all. 

With a laugh, Y/N grabbed Garcia by the shoulders. Normally, she wasn’t so frank, but Garcia was so wasted, she probably wouldn’t remember what she’d said in the morning. “The reason we have to go is because I want to jump my fiancee’s bones, capiche?”

“Oh my god, I’m so dumb,” she laughed, taking another sip of her fourth beer. “Of course, you just got engaged. You’re young and in love. Go! Have fun!” She turned back around to everyone at the table, most of whom looked over with raised eyebrows; they knew exactly why Y/N was pulling Spencer out of the restaurant.

“Morgan!” Y/N yelled before walking out of the restaurant completely. “Make sure she gets home okay, she’s plastered. Text me when she’s home.”

“I got you, babe. You and Pretty Boy have fun. You sure you’re gonna be up for sexy times, Pretty Ricky?” Morgan asked facetiously, laughing as Spencer flipped him the finger before walking away.

As they walked down the street (they lived about ten blocks away), Y/N looked over. Spencer’s face was content, a bit sleepily, a little drunk - a look she normally didn’t see from him. “You gonna be okay for that make-up sex we talked about?” she said with a wink. “I’m fine if you wanna wait, but we just got engaged, so I wanted some us time.”

“Oh, don’t think I’m not good to go,” he said, turning around and walking backward in front of her. “Don’t let Morgan get in your head. I may have had a couple of drinks, but I have been waiting for this, and I will not let booze get in my way.” The loon nearly walked off the curb, but Y/N caught him, pulling him in the direction of their apartment, but not before stopping for a water bottle. “I’m cleansing,” he laughed.

“I’m sure you are,” she replied. “I’m just saying that we can go home and have sex and that’s great, or we can cuddle up on the couch. I just want some special time together. I only plan on getting engaged once.” Just as they got back to the apartment, he finished up his water, chucking the bottle into the recycling can outside. “Me too, and I am perfectly sober and good to go.” They approached the apartment door and he reached out for her, pulling her head to his by the back of her neck. 

She pulled out the key for their apartment, her lips gliding over the vein in his neck as he wrapped his arms around her waist. “I love you so much,” he said. He was still a little drunk, but he didn’t seem to care, reaching back and taking off his shirt the second he got into the apartment. As they went to step toward the bedroom, their feet got tangled, causing them to lurch backward toward the floor and leaving them a tangled mess somewhere between the kitchen and the bedroom. “Guess we’re doing this down here,” he laughed.

“Really?” she snickered, burying her head in his neck. “Isn’t that gonna hurt you?”

“I’m still a little drunk,” he laughed, pulling her mouth to his. “I’ll be fine.” Bolting upward, she reached down for the hem of her shirt and ripped it off, her bra flying in the opposite direction before she came to lie flat against his chest again. She smiled as the engagement ring reflected the light of the moon. He’d picked out a beautiful piece that she still hadn’t had the chance to truly appreciate yet. 

Pushing off his body yet again, she came to stand up above him, watching him wriggle out of his jeans as she disposed of hers. He took himself in his hand, righting himself so she could sheath his length immediately, but she took him by surprise, kneeling between his legs as she took him in her mouth, her wet heat causing his hips to jerk upward. “Oh my god,” he said, reaching over and grabbing for his pants.

“Do you wanna just not use that,” she asked, referring to condom he was reaching for. “We can get a jump start on that family.”

“You sure?” he asked, biting his lip as the mood changing from fervid to sweet in milliseconds. She nodded, crawling up his body and placing kisses as she went, until she finally reached his mouth again.

“Yea,” she said, grazing her teeth against his chin. “I want all of the babies.” When she ground down on his pelvis, he moaned, pushing his length upward again so she could envelop him. His mouth fell open at the feel of her heated core. Like a sensual dance, her hips swerved and swiveled, his hips moving against her to the beat as his fingers tangled into her hair, just tight enough to cause the slightest hint of pain that went straight through her. As her orgasm began to crest, she lost control of her movements, bracing her hands against his chest as she ground her core into him at an angle. “Oh shit, Spence,” she moaned. She shook violently against him, her orgasm running wild as he flipped her over and rode out her high before his own began to roll through him.

“Oh god, Y/N,” he breathed, nestling his head in her neck as he called out her name. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pushing ever so slightly against his ass as he came inside her. “Wow…”

She giggled into his mouth, her tongue jutting out to bathe her bottom lip, before she went and nibbled at the sweet spot behind his ear. “You wanna maybe take the rest of this baby-making to the bedroom?”

In one fell swoop, he jumped off the floor, gathered her into his arms and walked her into the bedroom to get a jump start on their new life together.


End file.
